


This I Do For You

by lastdream



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Early in Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Temporary Character Death, Threesome - M/M/M, Time Travel, a truly ridiculous number of tony feelings, eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 21:30:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6488113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastdream/pseuds/lastdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony has no idea if he can give Bucky the future he deserves, but he can sure as hell try to give him his past back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Present Day

**Author's Note:**

> Once again I'm blending MCU and 616 because of ~reasons... a rough guideline is that the past is the MCU, and the present is early canon 616, only with Bucky recovered much earlier. Because ~reasons, like I said ;)
> 
> This is my first time doing a longer story incrementally instead of posting it all at once, so I'm... a little nervous. If you catch any mistakes I'd be happy to learn about them, I don't have a beta so this is probably full of little things I'd never notice on my own. Thanks!
> 
> Enjoy!

“Are you gonna come up to bed soon?” Bucky asks, startling Tony out of his engineering daze. He’s designing a submarine, or trying to, but there are particular difficulties in making a waterproof metal contraption that can contract and expand at will, hold people inside, weather the extreme conditions of where they were hoping to go, run on clean energy, recycle oxygen, possibly go into battle, contain superheroes who could punch through concrete by accident—

“Tony?” Bucky says, and Tony jumps, realizing he’d fallen back into his designs.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry. Um, what was the question?”

“You coming to bed or not, genius?” Bucky moves to stand behind Tony and massage his shoulders. His hands, both the super-human right and the super-tech left, are so gentle on Tony’s skin and so skilled at finding the knots and working them out. Tony sighs and leans back into Bucky.

“In a bit, probably. There’s just a few more details to iron out.” Tony tilts his head back so he can look up at Bucky. God, even upside-down he’s gorgeous as hell.

“So, I should expect you by four?” Bucky teases, pressing his metal thumb into a particularly stubborn knot between Tony’s shoulder blades. The tension unspools under the pressure and a warm easiness travels down Tony’s spine, turning his muscles to honey.

“Hey, don’t be mean,” he protests weakly. He can’t muster indignation when Bucky’s touch feels _so good_. Tony groans when Bucky lifts the pressure to scratch his back softly through his shirt.

“Not that I’m opposed to workshop sex on principle, but I know for a fact our bed will be much more comfortable,” Bucky says. He strokes down Tony’s spine, using the metal hand just to liquefy Tony’s brain further, Tony’s sure of it.

“You sure about that, huh?” he asks, leaning into Bucky’s hands. God, his hands are nice. Even the one Tony didn’t build.

“Mmhmm. Pretty damn sure, we _verified empirically_.” Bucky enunciates the last words right into Tony’s ear like he _knows_ what they’re doing to Tony—he probably does—and punctuates them with a scrape of teeth over the shell of Tony’s ear. Damn him for knowing where all Tony’s best buttons were.

“Yeah, okay. If you insist,” Tony says, a bit more breathily than he’d like. “I’ll just finish this up later.” Bucky raises an eyebrow, managing to look serious even upside-down. “Or tomorrow. Tomorrow’s good too.”

“Thought so,” Bucky smirks. He lifts Tony into a bridal carry, left hand under his shoulders and right under his knees. Tony’s arms instinctively go around his neck to help support himself, but Bucky’s not even straining under the weight. There’s a small part of Tony that wants to complain, because that is _seriously not fair_ , but there’s a much larger part that just wants to enjoy the fact that he’s got a supersoldier boyfriend to complement his strength kink.

The secret project hidden behind the innocuous submarine schematics can wait, at least for a day.

 

*

 

Sex with Bucky, and the hours of heartfelt spooning afterwards that neither of them will publicly admit to, is amazing. It always is, and it probably always will be, so it shouldn’t come as a shock that it just makes Tony think even more about his secret project.

After breakfast he has to dash off to Stark Industries, because Tony Stark needs to smooth over the Board’s concerns about Iron Man, and how’s that for ironic? Ever since Iron Man took up with his new and recently-criminal teammate, the public has been concerned that the Avengers’ values are slipping, that they won’t be able to protect their city so well if one of their teammates flips and goes Winter Soldier again. The Board is mostly concerned that Tony will get killed and annihilate their stock prices.

Funny how that works. Tony is fairly used to telling them that no, he is not going to drop dead tomorrow, so you can stop trying to pretend you have more power in my goddamn company than I do, thank you very much.

He just never imagined that _Iron Man_ would be the one with questionable morals, and _Tony Stark_ would be the one who vouches for him.

It’s one more reason to be worried about his secret project, but he buries the constant concern of _how do they see me?_ under a mountain of _screw them all, it doesn’t matter_ , and pretends it’s enough. And anyway, his secret project is his business, and as much as he owes the people his life for having taken theirs with his weapons, he doesn’t owe them his _private_ life, too. One thing, at least, he should be able to keep.

 

*

 

That evening, Tony’s able to get the metalwork done for his secret project. Vibranium is harder to work with than a lot of metals, because as soon as it crystallizes at all it doesn’t want to do anything else, _ever_ , but it does have indestructibility going for it, so there’s that.

At last, it’s done. Tony looks at it, a little in awe. He’s no stranger to being awed by the beauty of his own work—the people who call him arrogant aren’t just making it up—but he really, truly, doesn’t think he’s ever done finer work. The armor, maybe, _maybe_ , but it’s almost too close to call. The biggest difference is that the armor makes him feel _safe_ as soon as he’s in it, no matter what’s going on, and that this little, lovely bit of metalwork makes him feel nervous as hell just knowing it exists.

Tony might have stared at his finished product for hours, except that the seal of his workshop door makes a sound as it releases to let Bucky in. Quickly, Tony hides his secret project in a little box and tucks it into his pocket.

“You live down here now?” Bucky asks as he approaches. Abruptly, Tony realizes that this is the second time in two days Bucky has had to come fetch him out of his lab, the second time in two days he’s basically _avoided_ his own boyfriend, and the familiar clutch of guilt tightens in his chest.

“I’ve been neglecting you,” he says unhappily.

“What’s that?” Bucky comes up close to Tony and puts his right hand on Tony’s cheek, fingers rubbing tiny, warm circles into his temple. It’s so _nice_ and sweet that Tony doesn’t even know how to react.

“You just said—“ he begins, but Bucky’s thumb moves to his mouth to cut him off. Tony presses his lips to it automatically, fighting to hold Bucky’s concerned gaze.

“Shh, I was teasing you. At this point I expect you to keep weird hours, and most of them down here.”

That actually hurts worse, God, has he let Bucky down so badly that he doesn’t even expect him to do better anymore?

“Not like that, Tony,” Bucky says, as though reading Tony’s mind.

“Like what, then?”

“I knew another guy like you, you know. Had these passions that would take up his whole mind, his whole heart. If you’da let him, he woulda stayed in his room for days, just working on that one thing. For him, it was art, and he was one of the best fellas I ever knew.” Bucky puts his metal hand on Tony’s waist to pull him closer. “I’m not about to like you any less just cause your thing is _miracles_ , Tony.”

Tony opens his mouth.

“Shut up,” Bucky says affectionately. “Just ‘cause you can understand them doesn’t mean they aren’t still miracles.”

“And—“ Tony has a suspicion, but he has to ask, “who was this other guy?”

Bucky moves closer and presses their bodies together. On the field, and even in bed, it’s easy to forget that they have a height difference—Bucky’s skill is dazzling, _overwhelming—_ but here when Bucky’s tucking himself into Tony’s body, arms going easily under Tony’s, it becomes obvious that he’s almost four inches shorter. Tony buries his face in Bucky’s hair, trying to pretend he doesn’t feel awkwardly tall.

“Just some nobody from Brooklyn. Might know him better as Captain America.” There’s a smirk on Bucky’s mouth where it’s pressed behind Tony’s ear, and it makes him shiver almost as much as the fact that he was just _compared to Captain America_.

He can’t deserve that. He can’t.

But whatever Tony deserves, _Bucky_ thinks Tony’s worthy of it, and Tony can’t help but lean down and catch Bucky’s mouth in a kiss. He tries to put his whole heart into it, the love and the gratitude and _everything_ , all in one kiss. Bucky’s movements are slow and steady, languorous. He moves like he’s got all the time in the world and he’s just waiting for Tony to calm down and match him.

“Something’s got you worked up tonight,” Bucky observes. His breath washes over Tony’s kiss-sensitive lips, making them tingle.

“I, yeah, it’s—it’s nothing,” Tony says. Bucky obviously doesn’t believe him, but Tony is _so not ready_ to tell him about the secret project yet, and Bucky seems willing to wait. Thank God.

“Come on, let’s go to bed,” Bucky says, and Tony perks up a little. “To _sleep_ ,” Bucky chides. “Even crazy rich super geniuses need to get a little shut-eye every now and then.”

“Yeah, okay,” Tony agrees. He smiles a little as Bucky takes him by the hand and leads him out of the workshop.

He’ll sleep better with Bucky beside him, anyway.

 

*

 

The Avengers alert goes off in the middle of the day, and Tony narrowly escapes his R&D meeting with the flimsiest of excuses. Really, it’s a miracle no one but Bucky has figured out his secret identity yet.

Well, Jan probably has, but she and Tony are friends, so she won’t say anything. She loves to gossip, but she’ll never spill anything that’s _really_ important.

As soon as he’s in private, Tony thumbs the fingerprint lock and throws open his briefcase. The golden faceplate of his armor greets him, and he wastes no time in pulling on all of the pieces. They lock into place around him as the systems power up, and as the HUD flickers into view, Tony feels the strong, solid feeling of _yes, this is right._ This is how he can do the most good, save the most people, make up for the most mistakes.

This is how he can fight Doombots in Central Park, yet again. Ah, well, the life of a superhero can’t _always_ be new and exciting. Still, the Doombots have to be stopped.

He shows up to the fight about the same time that the other Avengers do, and they immediately fall to destroying the Doombots. This kind of fight doesn’t exactly take a lot of creative tactics; smash the bots, get the civilians out of the way, check to see if Doom himself showed up (he probably didn’t) and deal with him accordingly. Piece of cake. Or, Tony thinks, amused with himself, walk in the park.

There is one strategy that works pretty well with Doombots: if you herd them close together, their dampening fields will start to affect each other, and they’ll all get dumber. The Doombots _know_ that, though, or they do when they’re not too close to each other, and usually they try to resist Tony’s efforts to corral them.

Usually being the operative word.

Right now, for no reason that Tony can see, the Doombots _all_ seem to be stupid, regardless of how close they are to one another.

“Hey, Bucky?” he asks over the comm, “You punched anything that feels like Latverian dictator yet?”

“No. You think he’ll show?” On one of his screens, Tony’s watching Bucky do some complicated acrobatics that leave a half-dozen Doombots crumpled on the ground, and the bastard isn’t even breathing hard.

“I don’t know. These bots are acting kinda weird.”

“You’re right, this is way too easy,” Jan puts in. She’s so small right now that Tony has to have the HUD track her with a little indicator arrow, and Doombots are falling left and right, smoking and with rents in their armor. “Distraction, you think?”

Tony blasts a Doombot maybe a little harder than required. “Damn, you’re probably right.” He runs a scan and finds— “Guys, I got some weird energy coming from over there, behind that hill.”

“Well go check it out, Shellhead,” Jan says. “We can handle these lumps just fine.”

“Aye!” Thor agrees. He seems like he’s been enjoying putting his hammer through Doombots too much to contribute, but he’s always happy to talk _about_ the smashing. “We shall defeat them handily!”

With that settled, Tony peels off to investigate the strange energy pulses going on over on the other side of the hill. He really, really hopes this doesn’t turn out to be more _magic_ , which apparently is a Thing. Tony may be forced, at this point, to concede that it is a Thing, but he doesn’t have to like that Thing. It’s more like that cousin everyone pretends they don’t have because he’s embarrassing to know. Or at least, that’s what Tony _assumes_ it would be like, if he had—oh wait. Magic is Morgan Stark. That makes a disturbing amount of sense, actually, what with the playing fast and loose with the laws of physics and/or probability thing.

He’ll have to explore this metaphor in greater detail later.

On the other side of the hill, Tony finds what he was expecting and dreading in equal parts: Doctor Doom himself. He looks exactly like one of his Doombots, except for the way the man pulls off arrogance and imperiousness even through his metal shell.

Hey, just because Tony admits he’s arrogant doesn’t mean he has to like that quality in _other_ people.

At the moment, all of Doom’s imperious will seems to be focused on a strange square platform-thing. Tony has no idea what it’s supposed to do, but given Doom’s obvious displeasure with it, Tony’s just going to be glad that it’s not working for the moment. Instead, he focuses on separating Doom from the platform-thing.

Because this is _Doom_ , Tony goes straight for the unibeam, blasting the supervillain away before he even has time to register Tony’s presence. Doom somehow manages to look indignant at having been surprised.

“You will pay for this slight to Doom!” he declares; okay, par for the course. The strange thing is that he _disappears_ right after that, which, _damn magic_. Tony runs scan after scan but as far as he can tell, all the weird energy left Central Park when Doom did. He wants to scan Latveria to see if Mr. Weird Energy went all the way home, but that would probably be taken as an act of war or something, which would be Bad News.

The fact that his frequent incursions into New York with robots that look like himself is not considered an act of war is the result of some very convoluted politics that Tony thinks not even _he_ could understand.

However, now that Doom’s gone, Tony can actually get a good look at the platform Doom had been working on. It must have been malfunctioning pretty seriously, for Doom to just abandon it like that. Normally Victor Von Doom was too smart to leave any new technology within reach of Iron Man.

So either Doom really considers this thing useless, or it’s some kind of trap.

And Tony’s scanned it extensively, so unless there’s some kind of magical booby trap—he’ll have to ask Thor in a moment—it’s probably safe to bring back to his lab. He’s actually kind of excited. What kind of device does Doom try to activate in Central Park, only to give it up as a bad job at the first sign of Avengers?

 

*

 

A Time Platform, apparently. Or that’s what Tony’s decided to call it. It’s a very self-explanatory name: you stand on the platform, you travel in time for a week before it yanks you back automatically.

Or you would, if Doom had actually designed a thing compatible with his own power sources. What he’s created is a device that _would_ allow you to travel in time, provided you just happen to have a powerful _other_ device that can manipulate and direct energy in just the right way.

Oddly enough, the _other device_ just happens to be Tony’s repulsor tech, which exists only in his Iron Man armor, and in his brain. No blueprints, no schematics—no way that Doom could steal the RT to get what he needs for his time-travel device. Coincidentally, Doom just happened to leave this time-travel device that only Tony could power right on Tony’s doorstep.

Or, you know, not so coincidentally. He’s probably intending for Tony to finish his time platform for him, so that he can steal back a finished product. Unluckily for him, the Mansion’s defenses are definitely good enough to keep out one evil Latverian dictator who has problems with intellectual property rights and _doing his own damn science._

The Mansion can keep out Doom, which means that Tony is free to finish the time platform himself.

It started as curiosity, but then he thought about the way Bucky had talked about that _other fella_ , the guy who was Bucky’s best friend and just happened to be Tony’s childhood hero (and not-so-childhood hero). Bucky wasn’t verbally demonstrative, not usually, so for him to give a whole little _speech_ about how great the guy had been? Bucky had to love his Captain America a whole damn lot to talk about him like that.

Tony has no idea if he can give Bucky the future he deserves, but he can sure as hell try to give him his past back. He inputs the coordinates, exactly one week before the date and time he’s had memorized all his life.

 _Bucky_ , he writes, _I know this is sudden, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before I left, but this is important. I’ll be back in a week, on the dot, and hopefully with very good news. SI and the Avengers should be able to handle themselves without me for that long. I love you. TS_

Tony presses his hand over the small lump of the secret project in his pocket and swallows down the regret that wants to rise in his chest.

He steps onto the platform.


	2. The Past, Day 1

When Tony looks up and sees the technology and uniforms of a military base that confirm he’s in the 1940s, he thinks he should probably be proud that he was just the first human ever to achieve successful time travel, and maybe a little upset that it took _Doom_ ’s technology to help him do it.

In truth, he just feels nauseated. He should probably invent some kind of capsule to protect people who use the time platform. Or just destroy the platform before any supervillains find a way to take or duplicate it for nefarious purposes.

Tony wishes he could have brought the armor, but it would have interfered with the platform systems. Even if he could have, there’s no chance it wouldn’t be noticed in a heartbeat. As it is, his clothes are going to be noticed any second now, so he has to put the second phase of his plan into action. If he was right about the coordinates, Howard Stark will have a lab around here somewhere, and Tony will be able to take advantage of his clothes, materials, and quartermaster relationship with Captain America and the Howling Commandos.

He resolutely doesn’t think about how effortless it will be to fit into his father’s clothes, or how easy it will be to be mistaken for him.

Luckily, the platform has delivered him to a spot within the guarded perimeter of the base, so he won’t have to sneak past actively alert armed soldiers. Just passively _this-is-a-warzone_ alert armed soldiers. Because that’s much better.

Tony does feel a little better once his task parameters are set, though. A defined goal gives him something to aim for. Get to Howard’s lab, get Howard elsewhere, get disguised. That’s simple enough for now. A wild, fleeting though crosses Tony’s mind that it’s a good thing he hadn’t yet started growing out a goatee like he’d been thinking of; he’s pretty sure Howard had just a mustache at this point in time, too.

“Mister Stark,” a clipped, amused voice says. Tony whips around, startled, to find Peggy Carter, _the_ Peggy Carter, his _Aunt Peggy_ standing there, younger by far than he ever knew her. He gropes for words for a second. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Tony gapes. Is he in trouble? Was this normal for Peggy Carter and Howard Stark? He did his best to avoid his dad’s good-old-days stories, especially when Aunt Peggy was around to tell him better ones. Truer ones too, probably.

“I, uh, my lab,” he says awkwardly. He does his best to imitate Howard’s Forties Movie Star accent, but he thinks he probably fails. Aunt Peggy hasn’t scolded him since he was a _boy_ , so this tone of voice is making him feel six years old again, too tiny for the adults and way too precocious for all the other kids.

“I’m not stupid, you know. Your lab is that way,” Aunt Peggy says, pointing. She still sounds amused, though, and Tony can’t fathom why.

“So it is,” he agrees with a strained smile. He is grateful for the directions, it would look pretty bad if a guy who looked only _nearly_ like Howard Stark wandered around a military base snooping. It would really suck to get arrested as a spy in the _forties_.

“You’re going to go bother the Commandos, aren’t you?” Aunt Peggy asks, but it doesn’t really sound like asking. Howard had made it sound like he and the Commandos had _just happened_ to be in the same place so many times, but had he really gone creeping around just to collect stories about them? Tony suppresses his shudder and tries to look chagrined. It isn’t hard. “Steve won’t be back until tomorrow anyway.”

And it got even worse. God, Howard was such a creeper. Not that Tony hasn’t spent some _quality time_ ogling posters of the good Captain, particularly in his early teenage years, but it seems so much more wrong coming from his _dad_. He tries to reassure himself that it probably wasn’t like that, but it doesn’t work very well.

At the same time, he kind of hopes that it was _just_ creeping around Captain America (with incidental Commando-creeping), because that means that the list of people who can recognize him as _not Howard_ is shorter.

“Right, yeah, I’m just going to go do some… science. Yeah. See you later,” Tony babbles, and stumbles off in the direction Aunt Peggy had pointed. He really hopes she hasn’t noticed anything _too_ unusual about him, but that’s a futile hope for a woman who will head an _intelligence agency_. He adjusts his expectations a little: he hopes she didn’t notice anything unusual enough to come kill him in his sleep. There, that’s more manageable.

 

*

 

The one part of his plan Tony feels really prepared for is the “get rid of Howard step,” which, unfortunately, is also thanks to Doctor Doom. He was able to modify a couple of the smaller components of the time platform to serve as a much smaller, much more limited time-field generator. If he’s right, it activated when the time platform did, so as soon as he slaps one on Howard Stark, he’ll be frozen in time until the platform deactivates—the same moment Tony will be brought home. It’s very elegant, if he does say so himself.

Once Tony sees the actual door to Howard’s lab, it becomes very obvious that that’s what it is. Howard himself never cared much about safety, but _somebody_ ’s put up warning signs all over the place, as well as a biohazard symbol or two. Just to be safe. Actually opening the door is child’s play.

Inside, Tony isn’t sure whether he wants to cringe or nod approvingly at the state of Howard’s lab. Compared to Tony’s workshop, it’s positively _tragic_ , but it does have almost all of the best contemporary technology.

Tony has a fleeting thought of going to meet _the Alan Turing_ , but he came here to save _the Captain America_ , and that’s what he’s going to do.

“Who’s there?” a very familiar voice calls out, startling Tony. It’s coming from behind some machinery, but any second now the body attached to that voice is going to come around the table and _see Tony_ and Tony really has no idea what to do with that information. He hasn’t seen Howard in years now, and he doesn’t, honestly, miss him very much at all. He freezes in place. “Edward?” Howard asks.

Well, that makes sense. Tony looks more like his father than his uncle, but if a random person who looks like you shows up in your lab your first thought probably isn’t “Look, my future time-traveling son!”

“Uh, not quite.” The confused instincts Tony has always had regarding Howard Stark are warring with each other, unsure whether to go fight or flight or—no, he needs to stop. He should be over this, it’s been years. Tony fights down his instincts and pulls out the time-field generator, careful to keep the active side of it from contacting his skin.

“What’s going on? Who are you?” Howard asks, and oh, that’s his accusing voice. Tony had almost forgotten. He’s not sure he can stand to hear another word of it, so he darts forward and slaps the device onto Howard’s chest before his father can react.

The device works instantly—it was already activated, after all. Howard freezes in place, face upset, hands coming up defensively. He looks like a wax statue.

“Sorry, dad,” Tony says, and he’s not sure whether he means it.

He drags the frozen Howard over to a storage closet and carefully stands him up inside. A quick check of Howard’s pockets turns up a few keys, some money, and a passport, which Tony takes. The door doesn’t seem like it can be locked to the inside when Tony checks, so he shuts it and locks it. No one will be able to get in and find the immobilized Howard, but Howard should be able to get out once he’s released from the time-field.

“Alright then,” Tony says briskly, shaking himself out of whatever that feeling had been. It takes him only a couple of minutes to figure out the way to Howard’s quarters.

Howard’s clothes fit Tony almost exactly, which Tony is _still not thinking about_ , but Tony keeps his own shoes. Soldiers probably don’t keep up with the latest fashions in high-society men’s footwear, anyway. Then he heads back to the lab, because Howard probably has some kind of duties to be fulfilling. If nothing else, he’ll be issuing gear to replace the Commandos' damaged stuff, and he’s pretty sure he can handle that much. Aside from the whole disguised-as-his-father thing, Tony actually feels pretty good about how well this is going.

 

*

 

He continues to feel that way right up until Bucky comes to get a new sniper rifle, because his took a bullet in the last firefight and is now non-functional. Tony looks up from where he’s been perusing Howard’s tools, and _bam_ , Tony’s future boyfriend, standing there casual as anything but also _not knowing it’s Tony_.

And Bucky—Tony can’t help but look him over, head to toe, assessing (he doesn’t seem to have any wounds, good) and appreciating (he’s wearing that blue coat Tony’s never seen in person but now wishes he had, _damn good_ ). Compulsively, Tony pats at the item in his pocket. His mouth feels a little dry, and he realizes belatedly that it’s been hanging open for several seconds now. Bucky is smirking.

“Not that I’m not flattered, Stark, but you gotta be pretty soused to be thinking I’m some kinda dame,” Bucky says. He sounds like he’s finding this deeply hilarious, and Tony’s mouth moves to tease him back, and he only just stops himself in time.

This Bucky doesn’t know him, he reminds himself, does know who he is, and certainly doesn’t sleep with him on a regular romantic basis.

This Bucky also doesn’t know that Tony gave up drinking almost a year ago and the last thing he really wants to hear about is alcohol right now, but Tony ignores that. He can’t afford to take offense to every mention of an alcoholic drink, not and still be in the same room with his company’s Board and their particular love of scotch.

“I’m just—tired, sorry,” he says, remembering at the last second to disguise his accent. Bucky looks skeptical, but just stands there expectantly. “Right, yeah, I’ll get you what you need. Just give me a moment.”

Tony stands to go find the gun Bucky’s waiting for, watching him surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye. It’s not that Tony doesn’t like the black-leather look _his_ Bucky has going on—he has a _deep and abiding_ appreciation for that leather, okay—but this Bucky looks _different_. He’s a soldier for sure, but the way he carries himself is more open and less guarded, and there’s something in his eyes that looks… looser. More relaxed. He hasn’t been rekidnapped by Hydra, tortured for sixty years, repeatedly brainwashed, and forced to murder hundreds of innocent civilians yet. This is a Bucky who is still, at base level, more or less happy.

That hits Tony so hard his knees almost buckle underneath him, and he clutches his hand to his chest, like he can hold back his wildly beating synthetic heart. This would be a really terrible time for a heart attack, he thinks, and he tries desperately to calm down.

It’s just that _Bucky_ , Bucky Barnes, the man he loves, is _right there_ and _happy_ and it’s all going to end in less than a week, and Tony can’t _do anything about it._

Oh God, Tony thinks. Oh God, this was a terrible idea. He didn't think this through _at all_. He can’t do this. He can’t just let all of that happen to Bucky—

But he has to. If he saves Bucky, he might as well give up on Captain America right then. He already knows what’s going to happen to both of them; Cap is going to die, and Bucky’s going to “die.” If he saves Bucky, if he tells him what’s going to happen, he’ll get arrested as some kind of spy before he can say repulsor. The fact that they’d find Howard Stark in the closet, completely still without either beating heart or breath, would definitely not do him any favors. It might even get him outright killed. The Allies would assume that the mission must be important, or he wouldn’t have tried to stop it—and then everything would go ahead as before, and Bucky would “die,” and Cap would die, and Tony would die too, without having changed anything.

Everything about the situation is the worst kind of Catch-22. If he does nothing, then Bucky will be taken and _hurt_ and this time around it will be on Tony who _chose_ not to stop Hydra from taking him, but if he does something about it then Tony gets to go to his grave in the forties, with a clean conscience maybe, but without having saved even one person from the horrors ahead.

He can’t help but do the math in his head. Blood calculus. Cap’s life is the only thing there is _to_ save in this situation. Tony’s soul is already battered and bloody, he doesn’t get to take it into account.

“You okay, Stark?” Bucky says. Tony registers dimly that Bucky’s left hand—his _human_ left hand—is on Tony’s shoulder reassuringly, and he has to fight himself to keep from leaning into it. For a desperate moment he actually considers turning into Bucky's arms and holding him tight, hiding his face in the corner of Bucky's neck and shoulder like he does when everything is just _too much_ at home. He has no idea what his face has been doing all this time, but he schools it quickly, tries to wrap his feelings back up under the armor he can never take off. It probably doesn’t work.

“Yeah, I—I will be, anyway.” Tony reaches for the rifle he’d been going for earlier and looks it over. It’s pretty nice, and he can see where Howard altered it to make it better than the standard-issue, but he could still make it better. There’s not too much he can do without his own fabrication unit or at least some _real_ tools, but—

But nothing, he realizes. It doesn’t matter that he could make Bucky’s gun better, because with or without it Bucky’s going to fall from a train in four days.

Tony takes a deep breath and hands the gun over with a tight smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm probably going to keep updating ~twice a week, real life permitting. 
> 
> comments and concrit are lovely, they let me know what you like and want to see more of :D


	3. The Past, Day 2

Even as a full-grown adult, Tony doesn’t know how to wake up when he’s supposed to. He can set alarms, and he can pull the curtains wide to let in the morning sun, but really, the only thing that has a consistent chance of waking him at a reasonable hour is Bucky, and then only because he promises morning sex in recompense. So instead of wagering his ability to have breakfast the next day on whether or not he can wake up with reveille, Tony just stays awake through the night.

It’s not hard. Sleep is one of the many things Tony Stark just can’t do well without Bucky Barnes at his side. And anyway, he has plenty to work on in Howard’s workshop, research on the little granules of Tesseract energy that Cap brought back (which look interestingly similar to products of the Cosmic Cubes that Tony is familiar with), as well as smaller projects that he can modify and improve without going _too_ far outside the scope of Howard’s knowledge and intelligence.

Tony does take a little vicious pride in being _able_ to go outside of Howard’s intelligence, though.

Mostly Tony spends his time going through Howard’s journals, figuring out where exactly the Allied and Axis lines are at this point in time, and where the next Hydra targets are. The journals are encrypted, of course—Howard isn’t a complete moron—but it takes a grand total of about ten minutes for Tony to crack it, and that’s with the necessity of writing things out by hand instead of using the Mansion’s supercomputer.

What Tony finds is that he’s already mostly familiar with the situation; the attack in the Alps is in the planning stages, and there’s a red flag on a map somewhere showing the location of the Red Skull’s main base, where the fatal plane will be.

He feels like he’s a member of the audience at a play that has stepped, uninvited and unwanted, onto the corner of the stage right before the climactic act begins. Because however weird it is for Tony to actually _be_ here right now, he _knows_ _this story_. Knows it intimately. It’s the tale of his childhood, the one that gave him hope that truly good people existed in the world when he was at his lowest. He knows how it’s going to go. And it’s his job to get the star of the play out alive, regardless of the consequences to himself. He tells himself that, again and again and sometimes into a mirror, watching his face to make sure that he can keep his countenance despite his roiling feelings.

The fact that he’s abandoning Bucky to the torture of Hydra has joined the list of Things Tony Stark Does Not Think About, in addition to the fact that he's leaving Howard in a closet to miss what is, arguably, the most important week of his life.

It's a long list.

 

*

 

So these are the facts, as logically as Tony can put them:

He is in the forties, disguised as his own father.

His father will be unfrozen when he leaves, to find the world irrevocably different.

In three days, the love of his life is going to fall from a train and be presumed dead.

He must ignore this fact, because—

In five days, the hero of his childhood is going to crash a plane and die alone in the arctic.

Before that time is up, Tony has to figure out a way to stop the plane from crashing.

He must not allow the plane to reach its targets, either.

If he fails, he will be the one to kill Captain America this time around.

Or he’ll be the one to kill untold numbers of people.

In five days, Tony will automatically return to his own time, whether or not he has accomplished his mission.

However this goes, Tony will have blood on his hands.

He shouldn’t have come, but there’s no turning back now.

 

*

 

Sometime in the middle of the day—Tony has lost track of time, as he often does when working on intellectual puzzles—a very important-seeming person comes to see Tony. The name on his chest reads Phillips, which sounds vaguely familiar, but Tony definitely doesn’t know as much about him as he’d like. Howard’s journals, like Howard’s stories and Howard’s parenting, have proved to be woefully incomplete. Although in retrospect the incomplete stories might be, at least in part, Tony's fault now.

Well, Tony supposes _someone_ had to be in charge of this base, and as much as he’d like to nominate Captain America or Aunt Peggy, neither of them actually have the _rank_ to do it.

This Phillips person seems a little bit like a stereotype, a little too impressed with his own importance (yeah, yeah Tony can talk), but he doesn’t, ultimately, seem like a bad sort. Which is why Tony actually feels bad for blowing him off, throwing a mountain of technical jargon in his face instead of actually answering questions that only Howard Stark can. Eventually Phillips goes away, demanding that he get whatever answer he’s asked for within the fortnight. That might be an exaggeration, but Tony kind of hopes not, because there’s no way Howard Stark can work on anything until the end of this week.

When Tony thinks about this afterward, though, he becomes convinced that it was probably a good thing that he didn’t try to play along like he knew anything about the interactions between Phillips and Howard. The slightly confused, bordering on suspicious look Tony had received at first had been completely gone by the time he got to the fourth word that Rhodey has informed him is not in the Dictionary of Normal People.

Apparently jargon still works as a defense mechanism in the Dark Ages. Neat.

 

*

 

Tony’s Saving the World Plan (or at least, his plan for saving the most noble and selfless person _in_ the world) is slightly sidetracked sometime in the afternoon. The passing thought about Rhodey grows and spirals like a fractal, and for the first time since he arrived in the past, Tony worries about the state of the future.

The future of everyone here, but Tony’s present.

Rhodey has probably taken on the role of Iron Man in his absence, which no one is likely to notice unless they closely observe the fact that Iron Man now banters with the Winter Soldier slightly less. Rhodey likes some good banter too, though, so that’s fine.

Pepper will have control of the company while he’s gone. There probably won’t be any major executive decisions going on, and if there are, Bucky has enough creepy spy training to imitate his phone-voice, and Pepper can forge his signature. SI will be fine, too.

Mostly Tony is anxious about Bucky. He hopes Bucky isn’t worrying about him too much. He left a note, though, so that’ll probably be fine. Probably. He hopes.

He misses Bucky so much, though. The desire to see him again, and hold him, and be in his arms again, is overpowering when Tony lets himself really contemplate it. Since Bucky became an Avenger, the two of them haven't really been apart for more than a day or two at a time, so Tony is beyond unprepared for the loss. But Tony is doing this for Bucky, he has to remember that. He's doing this to return a beloved friend to the man he loves more than anything. It helps, a little.

Tony fingers the lump in his pocket and tries to refocus on his plane problem.

The problem is that the plane _has_ to crash, or millions of people will die. Maybe billions, if it starts a nuclear war. Tony himself will probably never be born, and he doesn’t even want to wonder about how that paradox will resolve itself. It's probably a good thing that Tony couldn't bring any technology through the time platform except for his synthetic heart and the platform's own parts, the ones he made into time-field generators, or he'd have to find out what the timestream does about paradoxes the hard way.

At the same time, Tony _cannot let the plane crash_. The plane crashes, and Captain America dies. Not even he could take the force of a plane crash straight into arctic ice, as solid as concrete. Not even the _armor_ could take that kind of a hit. The only thing Tony knows that can is the Hulk, and maybe Thor, but that’s it.

He forces himself to go find something to eat when he finds himself seriously considering the logistics of turning Cap into an enormous green rage monster.

Green rage monster with sensitive feelings that cause him to run off when he feels disrespected by his team, but green rage monster nonetheless. Probably not a viable solution to the plane problem.

 

*

 

Later on, Tony startles out of his unsolvable puzzle like coming out of a dream. It’s not the rude awakening of a nightmare, or the shock and agony that Bucky’s appearance caused earlier. Rather, Tony abruptly becomes conscious of the world around him for no reason that he can really explain. No one is in the lab with him, and there’s no sound that would—

There’s no sound. There’s _always_ sound, this is a base full of soldiers with places to be and people to see. Something is always happening. So it follows that something must be happening now. Something unexpected, or strange, probably, in order to shock a whole base into silence. Compelled by curiosity, Tony sets down his pencil and heads out to find the source of the non-noise.

Outside, there are still people out and about, as they would have been during normal base operation, but all of them are frozen in place, looking in a single direction. Tony looks that way too, and he finds that there is a possibility he hadn’t considered: the soldiers aren’t shocked into silence, they’re _awed_.

At the very least, Tony knows that _he’s_ feeling awe. The sensation has become a lot more normal for him in recent years, especially since being introduced to an immortal being who can command lightning, but he’s never felt it quite like this before.

Tony’s felt a kind of awe very _like_ this before, when he was a child. When he clung to stories that could make him believe even when Howard tried to stamp everything hopeful out of him. He felt an awe like this when Bucky talked about his lost friend, the one he loved so damn much that the memory of him had survived _brainwashing_. If you had asked Tony, at any point in his adult life, he could have told you that he knew _exactly_ how Captain America made him feel, and he would have been sure of his answer.

Until today.

Whether it’s the time-travel or the sleep deprivation or the golden sunset streaming through the base like a Nicholas Sparks cliché, _everything_ feels different now.

Captain America is walking into the base. He looks tired, and battered, and haunted, like any man who’s just been out on a long mission alone. But his shoulders are strong, his jaw is set, and his eyes look out at the men who have stopped to greet him with a quiet kind of joy, like he’s glad to see them and he _cares_ about them, even though he can’t possibly know them all. With his shield on his arm and the battle-marks on his body and the look of joy in his eye, he looks _noble_ , like the knights of old that Tony loves so much to read about.

Looking at him, a shining ideal so beautiful and yet so clearly, tangibly _present_ , some of the ugly, cynical things in Tony’s heart shrivel up. They seem almost laughable in the face of this man. Tony has known almost since birth that Captain America is a good man, the best of men, but he feels like until this moment he has never really understood what that meant. It's like being struck by lightning.

A moment later, the image changes. Bucky rushes out of the crowd and throws his arms around Cap, hugging him tight with relief. Cap hugs back with a warm look at his friend.

Tony’s first impression of an almost angelic hero changes irrevocably when his own lover adds himself to the picture. Captain America is greater than all of them, but Cap— _Rogers_ , even, except that Tony doesn’t feel like he’s earned the right to use the name—is a man just as much as they are. He’s _human_ and he’s still so very, completely good.

With a start, Tony realizes that actual tears have come to his eyes and he blinks them back, feeling ridiculous. He shouldn’t be _moved to tears_ by the sight of his childhood hero. With an effort that feels almost like heartbreak, he buries the awe under those painful, cynical things in his heart.

Cap is good, but he can’t be _perfect_ , not really. He’s idealistic, but surely that’s just another way of saying _wrong_. And anyway, even if he were as good as he seems, as good as some part of Tony hopes—

That would just be another way that Tony can never hope to measure up.

But _God_ , that thought hurts as much as it ever has, maybe more, that even his best isn’t enough, that even his best can’t match what Cap can do, and be, just by existing. He tries to reassure himself that he’s just worked up because he hasn’t slept in more than thirty-six hours, but it doesn’t feel true.

None of those cynical, bitter feelings really feel true. They feel like confabulations and rationalizations, he thinks.

Tony ducks back into Howard’s lab, trying to pull himself back together. He shouldn’t let his emotions get the best of him like this. His best might not be enough to match _Cap_ , but that doesn’t mean it’s completely useless. There is still some real, tangible good that Tony can do here.

He can save Captain America. And now that he’s seen him, he knows that he _has to_ , for Cap’s sake just as much as for Bucky’s. Failure isn’t an option.

 

*

 

It’s already pretty solidly dark when Tony decides that he’s composed himself enough to walk back to his quarters and try to get some sleep. Sleep deprivation can be just as impairing as alcohol, he knows that, so he’s not going to stay up too late unless it proves absolutely necessary. Sleep won’t be easy, but he’ll find a way to do it. It’s to save _Captain America_ , so you better believe that Tony will find a way to do it.

There’s not a lot of light outside in the base at night—Tony’s not the only one in World War Two who has trouble sleeping, plus the dark is stealthier and harder to bomb—but there is a little, most of it from the moon. Just enough to keep Tony from stepping in a pothole and faceplanting.

He’s about halfway between his lab and his assigned quarters when he hears footsteps drawing near to him. Instinctively, he tucks himself into a shadow and makes his breathing as silent as he can, which is pretty silent now. There are one or two perks of dating a super-assassin with master level sneaking skills. Whatever’s going on _in an army base_ is probably not dangerous, at least not to _Tony_ (unless he’s been found out), but he stays hidden anyway. Better safe than sorry.

Somewhere in the future, he imagines Jan laughing at him. She’s been telling him exactly that, in the context of lab safety, for months now, ever since he accidentally scorched Hank's eyebrows off.

Just then, the footsteps come close enough for Tony to hear the low, whispering voices that come along with them.

“ _Ste-eve_ ,” Bucky is saying, and Tony _knows_ that tone, but he can’t put his finger on where he knows it from. It’s kind of jarring to realize that the people he’s been trying most not to think about for the last few hours are _right there_ , but Tony keeps his cool. He tries, anyway, and they don’t seem to notice Tony, just out of sight in a puddle of shadow. Cap has super hearing, but he’s probably exhausted from his mission, and from the hours of briefing that must have followed if he’s only just getting free now.

“C’mon, Buck, shush. Not here.” And _oh_. That’s Cap’s voice. Tony knows the Captain America voice well (and _intimately_ ) from the numerous propaganda films he’d been in, but this—

This is his _real voice_. The way he really actually sounds when he’s talking to a friend, not the camera. It’s warm and a little wry and just _full_ of Brooklyn. The Brooklyn makes something in Tony—well, in his pants—sit up and pay attention, because in the future Bucky’s accent is neutral and indistinguishable, or sometimes faintly Russian, and his Brooklyn roots come out to play mostly in bed.

Tony might have developed just a little bit of a kink.

“Why not? ‘S all dark and quiet. Most everybody’s asleep. Not like there’s anybody here to see.”

Tony’s internal Dramatic Irony Sensor dings wildly, almost as bad as the time the doctor told him “well, your synthetic heart is great and all, but it might just give out under stress, so it’s a good thing you don’t do anything stressful like fly around in a suit of armor punching bad guys!” Or, you know, something to that effect. Tony feels caught between sniggering helplessly and clutching a hand to his heart like it might _actually_ give out under stress right then, because he’s recognized Bucky’s tone.

It’s wheedling, coaxing, trying to get somebody to give Bucky something he wants very much.

It’s exactly the tone Bucky uses to persuade Tony to take him to bed.

(Not that it usually takes this long on Tony, of course.)

“So impatient,” Cap is saying, but fondly. Tony stays in his shadow, eyes glued to the pair of them out of some kind of morbid curiosity, heart following some rhythm even less rational than pi.

“Jus’ one kiss, Stevie?” Bucky says, putting a hand on Cap’s broad chest, and _God_ , he calls Captain America _Stevie_. A whole romantic history spins itself out in the back corners of Tony’s brain, of a childhood friendship that grew into something more, of a devotion that survived the ages and the battlefield, of the real meaning of _We used to share an apartment._ All or none of it might be true, but the story behind Tony’s eyes is an _epic_.

He watches as Cap gives in and leans down, gives Bucky just a taste of the kiss he’d asked for. It’s short and sweet, but it makes Bucky _melt_ against Cap’s chest, just for a moment, heedless of the danger. That’s not just Tony’s own lover nearly swooning in another man’s arms, that’s—

That’s Achilles and Patroclus, that’s Alexander and Hephaestion. How can Tony compete with _that?_


	4. The Past, Day 3

Tony doesn’t remember getting back to his quarters that night. He just remembers the hours spent lying awake in bed, exhausted but unable to find rest with the incomprehensible tangle of feelings taking up all the space in his chest, crowding his heart into a tight little corner where it could hardly beat at all.

Eventually, he sleeps.

Or he must, because he awakens sometime the next day. It’s not morning anymore, at least not what the base would call morning, but it’s before noon. Tony probably slept for six hours or more, but they were uneasy hours of sleep, and he doesn’t feel rested at all, but at least he’s had enough sleep not to be _impaired_ in his work.

Neither the sleep nor the hours trying to figure out his own feelings have borne much fruit.

What Tony knows is that he’s jealous. It’s idiotic and pointless, but there it is.

 _So what_ if Bucky had other partners before Tony. Hell, he _knew_ Bucky had a reputation with the ladies, both in Brooklyn and in the European Theatre, and it’s not like Tony isn’t rather infamous himself. Tony’s never felt jealous of any of those women before, not even a little. That would be like getting upset with people in a gallery for having seen a painting before Tony bought it.

Not that he bought Bucky. Not that Bucky _can_ be bought. He’s strong and courageous and even if he doesn’t believe it about himself anymore, Tony can _feel_ the incorruptibility of him when they’re together.

But Tony’s losing track of things again.

It’s not even that he wishes Bucky had told him, though he kind of does. He would have _liked_ to know that his boyfriend and his hero once had an epic romance.

But that’s not the point either. Tony doesn’t know what the point is.

He doesn’t have a problem with Bucky having been with other people. He doesn’t have a problem with Captain America being with people.

So what the hell _is_ Tony’s problem?

 

*

 

Tony manages to scrounge a bite to eat—only to be reminded that soldiers aren’t making it up when they complain about the dining options—and then heads back to Howard’s lab. Ironically, since yesterday the place has been worked out in his mind as a kind of refuge, where it doesn’t matter whether he can handle his feelings or not. It might just be the science. Tony’s always felt best surrounded by things he can understand and _improve_.

Well, and Bucky. But Bucky is an exception to every rule.

He wishes Bucky were here now. Neither of them is particularly good at feelings, but they _know_ each other, and they know how to hold each other tight and loving until they both believe that the feeling between them is mutual. If Bucky were here, Tony wouldn't have to wonder what it is that he's feeling, because he could just _ask_ Bucky, or better yet just hold onto him until the problem didn't matter anymore.

Tony’s sitting at the desk doing… what is he doing? He’s been sitting there for some time with a pencil in one hand and a wrench in the other, but he can’t for the life of him remember what he’d been trying to do. If he ever knew, the knowledge is startled out of him by the voice that sounds from near the door.

“Well, you sure look like someone who got enough sleep.”

Tony jumps and freezes and his heart does a complicated little flip in his chest because _that’s Captain America’s voice_. Right behind him. _Snarking_. Since when does Captain America have a sense of humor? The confusing mess of feelings that at least partially resembles jealousy rises up again, and Tony fights it back down. It wouldn’t be fair to take that out on Cap—see, Rhodey? He can totally do the emotional maturity thing.

He looks up and finds six-plus feet of gorgeous All-American standing there, wearing the stars-and-stripes uniform. Tony’s heard that Cap had some input in the design, and while he’s nowhere near Jan’s level, he definitely got a few things right. He looks even better up close than he did from across the base—but no, Tony’s not going to go there. He has a boyfriend, he doesn’t get to look at other guys with intent, even if said guy happens to be his boyfriend’s boyfriend.

“You don’t,” is what slips out of his mouth. It’s true though; Cap looks bright-eyed and warm and oddly happy—basically, he looks like a guy who just got laid.

 _That was my boyfriend who probably gave you the time of your star-spangled life last night_ , he thinks peevishly.

As he watches, the lightest dusting of pink flush surfaces under Cap’s cheeks, adding to his glow and making him even more—nope, Tony isn’t noticing that. He closes his eyes for a second and thinks of his default distraction: Hank Pym in lingerie. Yep, still works like a charm. He opens his eyes and gives Cap his best show-smile.

“What can I do for you?” he asks, only just remembering his forties accent in time.

Instead of an answer, Cap just unslings the shield from his back and holds it out to Tony.

Tony can only stare for a long moment, trying hard to contain his reaction. His feelings toward the man currently stepping out with Tony’s future boyfriend are confused, but his feelings toward Captain America, superhero icon of Tony’s childhood, are much simpler. Tony’s inner fanboy is clamoring to be heard, and it takes all his strength to fight it down as he reaches his fingers toward the shield. The shield that Captain America is handing to _him_. The vibranium shield that Tony is now touching with his actual fingers.

“Oh,” he breathes. It’s lighter than he’d expected, and smoother, for all that he’s worked with vibranium before. He shifts the shield to one hand so he can reach down and press the lump in his pocket, reassuring himself.

“Is something wrong?” Cap asks. He looks kind of worried—yeah, this probably isn’t the reaction Howard usually has to this kind of thing.

“No, no, just whatever you brought it to me for,” Tony answers quickly. Cap just looks at him like he’s kind of an idiot, and wow. There’s look he never expected to get. It’s not cold though, not at all mean-spirited. Honestly, it reminds Tony of a less affectionate version of the look Bucky gets when Tony’s been in his lab for far too long without sleep. Tony shakes his head to clear it and looks down at the shield in his hands again, and realizes that yeah, he is kind of an idiot. One of the straps is obviously broken in two, both halves still attached to the shield but not to each other. “Ah,” he says eloquently.

“I think I swung it too hard,” Cap says, sounding a little chagrined.

“What? No,” Tony says, bringing the shield back to the worktable and starting to dig in the drawers for replacement leather. “No, this was bound to happen at some point.”

Luckily for Cap, Tony is dating a man who wears full-body leather armor at least once every few days—armor that Tony has helped him repair, replace, and frequently remove. If this had happened two years ago, both he _and_ Cap would have been flat out of luck. Tony could do metalwork any day, and probably in his sleep too, but the softer substances have never really been his forte. He still periodically asks Jan for help designing his undersuits, because he can bring the enhanced polymers, but she’s the one who can actually make them _work_ on a human body.

The shield is restrapped in only a few minutes. A couple of times he gropes around for a tool only to find Cap passing it to him already, but most of his focus is on the fact that _he is touching the shield_. He should really have gotten over that feeling by now, but it’s proving rather stubborn.

“Can I have the—“ he starts absently, and it’s in his hand a second later. Working with an assistant is kind of great. Tony had forgotten.

After a moment, he’s done. He hands the shield back to Cap, who takes it with measured movements, tests the new strap, and then carefully settles it back behind himself. Then, he erupts into motion and slams Tony against the wall, holding him a few inches off the ground with an arm across his shoulders.

 _What_.

“Can I come down please?” Tony asks. He thinks he’s a little in shock, and also his body is very confused because it knows the _normal_ reasons someone slams him into a wall, and it surely isn’t the same reason _Cap_ is doing it. Cap doesn’t have enough villain in him for this to be a supervillain beatdown, and as to the other option, well. Tony thinks it’s safer if he doesn’t connect the thoughts _Captain America_ and _supersoldier wall sex_.

And anyway, Cap has a boyfriend. So does Tony. The fact that it’s the same boyfriend is irrelevant.

“Yeah, sure you can come down,” Cap says mildly. “As soon as you tell me who you are and what you’re doing here, because you’re _not_ Stark.”

And Tony can’t help it; he laughs. It’s a little stifled because of the muscular forearm pinning his ribcage, but it’s helpless and slightly hysterical and pouring out of him all the same.

“If you had phrased that… _literally_ any other way,” Tony gasps, “You would be completely right.”

“What do you mean?” A little bit of anger is bleeding into Cap’s mild tone.

“It means I, ah—oh, hell.” He decides to just tell the truth and hope for the best. There’s a part of him, deep down, that can’t help but trust him, because he’s _Captain America_. “I’m from the future.”

“Bullshit.”

“Oh my God, you just swore,” Tony says, giggling helplessly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just, oh God. Captain America swears.”

“Captain America is a soldier who’d like a few _true_ answers now,” Cap says. His teeth are gritted, just a little, and would you look at that? Tony can irritate even Captain America. That’s got to be some kind of skill, or maybe a mutant power. He should have Xavier look into that once he gets home. _Ability to annoy human perfection_ , check.

“Sorry, look, I _am_ a Stark, that’s why it’s funny, it’s just—you know, I never really thought I’d meet you in person. Or that you would be—“ _banging my boyfriend_ , he does not say. That’s probably a surefire way to get himself punched.

In fact, it’s probably best not to mention Bucky at all. It’s bad enough he’s letting Bucky go to his fate; it’d be infinitely worse if Cap _knew_ that he was doing that. Tony’s pretty absolutely sure that Cap wouldn’t stand for allowing his boyfriend to be tortured just to save his own life. Which is noble and good, it really is, except that the only thing Tony can do to make his whole time-travel trip worth it is save Cap, so that’s just not acceptable.

Tony hates himself a little every time he has to put values on lives and weigh them, like any amount of pain is an acceptable outcome. But it’s not like he liked himself much _before_ , either.

“That I would be?” Cap prompts.

“A, uh…” Tony gestures expansively at Cap. “A regular human, you know. What with the swearing and the getting angry and the… this is going to get embarrassing soon. It probably already is. Anyway, I’m from the future, almost seventy years from now, I’m _Tony_ Stark, Howard’s son he hasn’t had yet.”

“Say I believe you—“ Cap begins.

“You really should, I have a really disturbingly high level of visible genetic similarity with dear old dad.”

“ _Say I believe you_ ,” Cap tries again, “why would you travel here, from seventy years in the future? Why would _Howard Stark’s son_ feel the need to change the War?”

“The War? No, no, I—“ Tony fights a vicious internal battle with himself, but it ends quickly when he realizes that if he doesn’t tell the truth Cap is never going to let him down from this wall except to put him into cuffs and a cell. He’ll just keep the parts of the future about Bucky to himself. “I’m here for _you_.”

“Me?” He sounds more surprised than a man of his stature and significance really should about that. Tony takes a deep breath.

“You’re going to die in four days.”

 

*

 

“So I’m going to crash this plane,” Cap confirms for the second time, like he’s still in disbelief.

“Yeah. It was—yeah.” Tony’s having a hard time finding the words to give Cap right now. How do you tell a man he’s about to die? “But I’m going to stop it. I’m going to find a way to save you.”

“Why?” Cap’s gaze gets suddenly very sharp.

Tony gapes, just a little. It’s like this man has _no concept_ of himself whatsoever. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re _Captain America_. You’re kind of a big deal. It’d… it’d mean a lot if you lived.”

“Enough to justify the kind of destruction you’re talking about? The scale of it? Are you really saying that one man matters more than whole cities?” Cap demands. He sounds—well, he sounds kind of furious. Tony recoils. It’s a sharp, bitter ache, realizing that he’s disappointed yet another person who means _so much_ to him, and it takes him a moment to realize that he can defend himself against the accusation. Cap isn’t right this time.

“Of course not,” he says carefully. “Of course I’m looking for a solution that can save everyone.”

“And what will you do,” Cap fires back, “if you can’t find one?”

Tony hasn’t been allowing himself to consider this option, that there _is_ no solution that will crash the airplane without killing Cap, because that’s just unacceptable. But in the back of his head, he knows. It isn’t even a decision, mathematically. He will have to let Cap go to his death. He’s the only one who has a prayer of even getting _onto_ that plane unscathed; no one can take his place. Tony will have to let him go, and let him die. He’s just not sure if he’ll be capable of that, if it comes down to it.

“I’m going to do my best,” says Tony. “I still have four days.”

Cap stands up, still looking angry. “Can you offer me _any_ proof that you’re actually—from the future?”

For a long moment, Tony considers. The only real choices are things he knows about Bucky, but he has to make sure that they were true even back in the war, before Bucky's brain got scrambled by Hydra. Tony thinks back to a lazy afternoon that they had taken off work, when they had just lain in bed between rounds and traded memories and dumb fantasies before they got called out as Avengers.

“In Brooklyn, you used to leave a little milk out for the cats, sometimes. Bucky couldn’t stand it ‘cause he thought you were wasting food, but he still thought it was kind of sweet. There was one of those cats he really liked, would have kept if you two could afford to feed her. If you go ask him now, I bet he’ll tell you she was gray with black socks, and the tip of her left ear was missing. He named her Linda in his head, after the second girl he ever slept with.” Well, Tony thinks, that got a little personal there at the end, but if there’s anything that’ll do the trick, this is it. Cap still looks vaguely skeptical.

After a long moment, he leaves the lab. It’s a little bit naïve to let a possible spy alone in Howard’s lab, but Cap is still young, younger than Tony would have imagined. That or he already trusts Tony more than he lets on. In any case, Tony is abandoned to his thoughts while Cap goes to check out his story. He tries to reframe the plane problem in his head, make it into the kind of simple logic problem that Tony could solve in his head when he was five. He _needs_ to solve it, especially now that Cap is _knowingly_ counting on him to solve the problem, and willing to walk into death if he doesn't.

Tony's more determined than ever to find a solution.

 

*

 

“That was a truly eerie level of detail, Stark.”

Tony’s head whips up from where he’s been studying a deconstructed transceiver, struggling to control the all-out grin that would probably make him look like a maniac. It seems like looking at the situation as a logic puzzle was the way to go, because he's starting to get _ideas_.

Also, Cap _believes_ him now. That’s the only thing that that sentence can mean, as far as Tony can tell. But still, Tony feels the need to say—

“Call me Tony. It’ll be dissociative.” At Cap’s blank look, he clarifies, “It’ll help you not to get me and dad confused.”

“I wasn’t going to,” says Cap. “Your voice is completely different. And you might look a bit like him, but only when it’s not straight on. Your features are a little… finer, I think? I’m not sure how to put it. But whoever your mother is, I think you must have gotten a lot from her.”

Tony blinks hard. He tells himself that it’s just Cap’s eidetic memory, his familiarity with Howard, _hell_ , even just his artist’s sensibilities for proportions. None of it takes away the lump that formed in his throat when he realized that Cap is one of the only people who looks at him and _doesn’t_ see Howard, even though Tony had wanted him to at first. It makes him feel _seen_ in a way that’s totally different from the way cameras always follow him. It’s ridiculous, but it feels like Cap _knows_ him. He manages a small smile, trying not to let show how much this is affecting him.

“And anyway, if I’m calling you Tony, you should call me Steve,” Cap says, smiling. It sounds sincere, like he’s honestly asking and not like he feels bad because Tony is having a pathetically strong reaction to a minor comment.

Tony understands them then, the tangled jealous feelings that have been lodged in his chest since he saw Steve and Bucky kissing. It’s not that he dislikes Steve or is upset with Bucky. It’s that Steve, as good and kind of a person as he is, is _competition_ for Bucky’s heart, competition that none of those girls in Brooklyn really had a chance to be.

However much Tony _knows_ that Bucky loves him, he can’t help but think, as he looks at Steve’s kind, sincere smile, that people who love Steve Rogers can never really stop.

Tony’s already pretty sure _he_ wouldn’t.


	5. The Past, Day 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fake science! or... real science that I know very little about! yeah! check your actual technical knowledge at the door :P

Tony wakes sometime the next day to the feeling of someone touching his arm gently, and the smell of coffee very nearby.

“Mm, g’mornin’, hot stuff,” he murmurs, leaning into the touch and turning to give Bucky a greeting kiss—only to find someone who is still hot but definitely _not_ Bucky standing at his elbow. He starts violently into alertness. “Sorry! Sorry, I just thought for a second you were—“ Tony chokes on the word _Bucky_ and forces out “my lover” instead.

For a second he reassures himself, feeling very good about the fact that he held back the word _boyfriend_ in front of Captain America, but then he recalls that he and Captain America in fact share a boyfriend, and his thoughts get suddenly very complicated indeed. It is entirely too early in the morning for this, he decides, and he reaches for the cup of coffee in Steve’s hand. It smells like something horrible and instant, but Tony’s caffeine dependence won’t care. Coffee is coffee.

Once Tony’s bloodstream is sufficiently caffeinated, he looks back up from the cup to find Steve looking back at him, amused but also unexpectedly intense.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

“Actually, yes,” Steve says wryly. “You fell asleep on some wires or something, your cheek is all covered in—“ Rather than finishing his sentence with words, Steve just makes a vague, complicated hand gesture at his own cheek, presumably indicating the pattern of sleep marks left by the mangled corpse of Tony’s deconstructed transceiver.

Tony can’t help himself then, he giggles. Steve continues to surprise him with the having-a-sense-of-humor thing.

“Really though,” he says, once he has himself back under control. “What does that look mean?”

“I just…” Steve begins. He colors a little and scratches at the nape of his neck with one hand; it’s unfairly cute. But no, Tony isn’t thinking about that. He touches the lump in his pocket to reassure himself exactly how much he isn’t thinking about that. “Until I saw you in here today, I wasn’t sure you were real or if I’d dreamed you up,” finishes Steve after an awkward pause.

Immediately a flirtatious line about him being in Steve’s dreams comes to mind, and Tony fights it down.

“I’m real,” Tony reassures him stupidly. Of course he’s real, Steve’s looking right at him, that was an idiotic thing to say. He casts about for something else. “Thank you for the coffee. Was that just an educated guess or what?”

“Huh?” Steve asks. “No, you asked me to bring you coffee the first time I came in here.”

“First time?” Tony repeats, and _wow_ , genius, way to show off your massive intellect. Captain America is going to think you’re a moron.

“Yeah, I asked how things were going, you just kind of grunted and asked for coffee. I figured I’d go get you my ration and see if that made you any more coherent,” Steve explains, and Tony feels a little reflexive guilt at drinking Cap’s coffee ration before he can remind himself that the caffeine couldn’t do anything for him anyway, what with the supersoldier metabolism and everything.

Plus, Bucky had mentioned once that Steve didn’t really like bitter-tasting things, and _holy God_ does that sentence now make Tony’s mind go dirty places. Horrifyingly, Tony finds his face feeling a little hot, and he hopes it doesn’t show too badly on his olive skin.

“Uh, yeah, that sounds like me,” Tony agrees finally. “My—“ _boyfriend_ “lover usually pulls me out of the workshop before I collapse there, but…” This is too awkward. Tony stops the sentence there and hopes the rest is implied enough that Steve can put him out of his misery and get on with the rest of the conversation.

“What do you do, in your workshop in the future?” Steve asks, sounding curious as hell, and _thank you God_. If there was ever something Tony could talk about at length (besides certain aspects of Bucky’s anatomy), it’s his science.

“You like science fiction, or at the very least you tolerate it when Bucky reads it—“ he starts, and pauses at the deeply weirded-out look on Steve’s face. Right, most people aren’t used to being told their own personal preferences by random strangers. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be creepy. The point is, you can basically assume that anything and everything you’ve read is possible, unless I specifically tell you it’s not.”

“Really?” Steve looks a little skeptical. “Do you have flying cars?”

Tony smiles widely. That was the first thing Bucky asked, too, before the Cosmic Cube forced him to integrate his Winter Soldier memories. He wonders which of them put the idea in the other’s head.

“Yep! Well, not everyone. But there is a… particular agency that uses them almost exclusively.” Tony also designed a flying sportscar that outclasses any and all SHIELD cars, but SHIELD doesn’t need to know about that one. “I myself fly almost everywhere, but not in a flying car. Though… I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell anyone, or, you know, write it down somewhere a historian will find it. It’s kind of a secret.”

“Ah,” Steve says with a look of dawning realization that doesn’t really fit the conversation at all. “I was wondering just _how_ you got so much information from Bucky. You must have gotten it from his journals.” His brow knits. “I’m not sure how I feel about everyone reading his personal thoughts, even I haven’t read those.”

Well, it’s as plausible and excuse as any.

“Not everyone,” Tony says, unsure why he’s trying to be so reassuring. “Howard started buying up a lot of your stuff later on and I guess I continued the trend and now I sort of… collect you?” Tony winces and tries not to bury his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry, this sounds terrible. One of these days, I swear, we’re going to have a conversation and I’m not going to seem like a horrifying stalker-person. I’m not, I just… you meant a lot to me as a kid, and then I… kind of have a lot of money, so I just kept…” Helplessly, Tony squeezes his eyes shut and thunks his head on the table. “Just kill me now, I’m going to keep digging this hole until you do.”

 _Don’t tell him about the Cap Tribute Room, don’t tell him about the Cap Tribute Room_ , Tony thinks at himself fiercely. _Don’t tell him. If you tell him, he might actually kill you_.

“It’s okay, Tony,” Steve says. “I know that Captain America is meant to be a, an inspiration, so I’m not gonna be upset that you felt inspired by him. He’s like… the best parts of myself, made into a whole new person. In some ways I don’t even feel like he’s really me. Do you know what I mean?”

“Oh, do I ever,” says Tony.

 

*

 

Once they get Tony’s Fanboy Crush of Shame out of the way, it’s like a dam breaks between them. Tony had thought that the tension had been relieved the night before, once Steve accepted his story about being Howard’s future time-traveling son, but now that he sees the difference, he doesn’t think he’ll ever _not_ see it again. It’s like an optical illusion. At first you see only a cup, but once you’ve been taught to see the two faces, you can see the ways that _both_ are part of the image.

Captain America and Steve Rogers are one and the same man, but they’re different, too. Captain America goes out on stage, he performs, he fights like no other man can, and he _inspires_ , like Steve said. He is justice and goodness and righteous strength concentrated into a pure form.

Steve Rogers is a quiet soul, who likes his solitude as well as his friends, who draws and jokes and plays around, but he fights too. Steve Rogers fights with his heart and his soul and all the goodness within him. He is the light that shines out of Captain America’s eyes, that makes him come to life and gives him that power over the dreams and passions of others. He makes people believe in him, and in what he’s doing, and in themselves, too.

Steve is the soul that animates the body of Captain America, and now that Tony sees him, he realizes that Steve was always the part of Captain America that was closest to his heart. The thought is too much, too sappy, and Tony forces it away, but that doesn't mean it's not still the truth.

 

*

 

“See, _you_ actually gave me the idea,” Tony explains. Steve looks kind of confused, but he waits for Tony to go on. “Well, you asked me what I would do if I couldn’t save both you and everyone else. If _you_ weren’t a part of the equation, so to speak.”

“I was harsher than I should have been,” Steve says regretfully, but Tony just shakes his head.

“No, you were exactly right. It was the push I needed to think about the problem in a different way. I had been spending so much time worrying about _you_ , and how to get _you_ off the plane at a safe time, in a recoverable state and location, that I barely thought about the plane. In retrospect, it should have been obvious. I’m an engineer.”

“What should have been obvious?”

“That I can’t do engineering with people, but I can engineer the hell out of a plane.”

“Can you… pilot it remotely or something?” Steve asks, and really, he’s so much smarter than most people would guess. He really took _assume anything and everything you’ve read is possible_ to heart quickly, and it’s clear how excited he is that Tony only rarely has to correct him.

“With the technology of my day, sure. It’s a little harder here, _God_ I miss transistors, and I’d kill for real circuitry, but I should still be able to manage it. I can make a device that can hook into the controls of the plane and allow me to send signals to manipulate them from a distance, even if I have to go analog to do it. The only trouble is that we’ll still have to get it _onto_ the plane to plant the device.”

“Well, we already know that I can get _on_ the plane,” says Steve. He’s smiling broadly.

Tony can’t help but think that his smiles are different from any other smiles he’s seen before. The ones Tony remembers from the future are all practiced, plastic, for-the-cameras smiles, the ones that more often mean the opposite of what they seem to. Tony himself has far too much practice smiling when he wants to die inside, and Bucky is only just relearning how to be earnestly happy. His smiles are breathtaking, but the really, truly, unselfconsciously sincere ones are few and far between, though all the more lovely for it.

Steve’s smile, though, is always earnest, always heartfelt, now matter how often he gives it. If he _has_ a practiced false smile, Tony hasn’t seen it yet. This particular smile is eager and confident and _dazzling_. It makes Tony feel something he hasn’t in days—hopeful.

This is really going to work.

“Exactly,” Tony says, pulling out of his thoughts to return to the conversation. “We’ll get the device onto the plane, get off, and then steer it into the ground from a safe distance!”

“Grr,” says Steve. Tony stops short and looks at him, sure he can’t have heard that right. Steve is blushing, his ears turning bright red at the tips. “Grr,” says Steve’s stomach, intensifying the blush, and oh, that makes much more sense.

“Maybe you should go eat something,” Tony suggests. He isn’t really hungry yet, but then, Steve’s metabolism works about four times faster than the average human, and Tony’s is a little slower.

“Do you want me to come back after, or do you need space to work?” asks Steve. He sounds like he’s trying to be impartial, but it’s clear that he prefers the former option.

“You’re welcome anytime, Steve,” Tony says honestly. “I enjoy your company.”

As Steve walks out the door in search of something to quell the growling beast that is his stomach, a heavy knot of guilt starts to grow in Tony’s stomach. He’s starting to realize that he enjoys Steve’s company a little _too_ much. Steve is pretty, by _God_ he’s pretty, but Tony can deal with pretty people. If pretty people were a problem, he and Bucky wouldn’t have lasted past the first time Jan walked into the room. The problem is that Steve is wonderful in every _other_ way, too. And Tony can’t stop noticing.

Tony presses hard on the object in his pocket and tries to swallow down his guilt. It doesn’t work very well.

 

*

 

By the time Steve gets back, Tony has more or less finished the hardware components of his plane-controlling device. It’s not too complicated, really, at least not compared to what he’s used to. With a few final tweaks tomorrow, it should be ready to take on pretty much any plane he can install it into. The installing process will take a fair few minutes, though.

The only real problem is the software. Short of having… anything at all… that can handle the software necessary to control a plane, he’ll have to compensate.

Partly, this means adapting the hardware to suit the situation. If the hardware has specifically designated wiring for every action Tony needs it to take, then the need for anything like software will be greatly mitigated. However, he can’t do without it _entirely_ —there’s just too much going on for Tony to assume that manual hardware controls will be enough to get a plane steered in the right direction and then into the ground. There’s too much riding on the fate of that plane for Tony to risk it.

The solution to the software problem is both easy and hard. Easy, in that it takes about four seconds for Tony to realize that the most advanced computer he has to hand is his own brain. Hard, in that he’ll have to come up with and memorize all of the software functions himself, and then input them in the correct sequence via controller.

Steve looks like his own brain hurts when Tony tries to explain this to him. Well, Tony can’t blame him too much; it’s not like software’s even been invented yet. There’s a few years left until they even get past the vacuum tube stage.

“So…” Steve guesses, “you’d like me to leave so you can focus on your… software?”

“What? No,” Tony says. “That’s the beauty of being a supergenius, I can hang out and do programming in the back of my head at the same time.”

“And so modest, too,” says Steve.

“It’s my best quality,” Tony agrees. “Well, that and the ability to fly and zap supervillains, but that one’s not really working out for me back here in the Dark Ages.” He winces. Why can't he seem to keep his mouth shut around Steve? “But that’s a secret, so, you know, keep it that way?”

“Why?” Steve asks. “I mean, why’s it a secret? I’da thought a guy like you’d be proud of being a, a superhero.”

“I am. I love it. Everything about it. It’s just that I… well, I’m not exactly popular back home. I spent a long time doing the wrong thing because I just didn’t know enough to stop and didn’t care enough to find out. I made weapons, powerful ones. I didn’t pay enough attention to who got them.” The words have to be hurting Steve’s opinion of him, they can't not be, but he forces them out anyway and ignores the roil of shame in his belly and the back of his throat.

“And then what happened?” prompts Steve. He’s leaning forward in his chair like he’s utterly fascinated, and his eyes are open and gentle. Encouraging.

“I got my head screwed on straight in… a dramatic fashion, and I made a suit of armor to fix the problems I created. It’s not enough, it can’t ever be enough to make Tony Stark good again.” Tony closes his eyes briefly in painful acknowledgement of that truth. “But Iron Man isn’t Tony Stark. He’s all the good I could have been if I hadn’t been such an idiot, if I—“

“I’m pretty sure you’ve never been an idiot in your life, Tony,” Steve interrupts. “And good… I don’t think it’s a thing you do. I mean, you can do good, sure, but it’s not a scale you have to balance. Good is a way you live, a thing you try to be. And it sounds like you’re doing a hell of a lot of trying, and that means something.”

Steve’s wrong, of course. He doesn’t really _know_ everything, he doesn’t know just _how many_ people died because Tony Stark didn’t care enough to pay attention, and if he did—

But he cares enough about Tony to try to make him feel better, and that means something, too.

“Thank you,” he manages.

All at once, he misses Bucky with a fierce ache in his heart, thinking of a hundred nights in bed together, quietly hating themselves and trying to love each other enough to make up for it. It’s not just that, though. He misses Bucky’s arms around him and his smile and the smell of his hair and the way it tickles his neck when Bucky leans over him in bed. He misses the quiet whirring of Bucky’s arm as he shifts in the night. He misses the near-silent _I love you_ , breathed into his neck in the dark, and the я люблю тебя that comes while Bucky dreams. He misses all of it.

And oh, God, Bucky is going to fall _tomorrow_.

“How is Bucky?” Tony can’t help but ask. He can’t get news about _his_ Bucky, back home, but he can know about this one here, this younger, happier Bucky, even if it hurts to look at him.

“He’s fine. A little tired maybe, he was worried about me while I was away,” Steve says. He seems a little confused at the change of topic, but his eyes are still meeting Tony’s. “You really seem to know a lot about him. To care a lot about him.”

Understatement of the year, Tony thinks. But he thinks back to Very Young Tony Stark, back when he was Not Yet Full of Shrapnel Tony Stark, and tries to imagine how he would have answered this question. Very differently than the way he would now, that’s for sure.

“Well you have to know that it’s a whole thing, the Cap-and-Bucky thing.” A gay thing apparently, but Tony’s not letting on that he knows. “And I always thought, you know, wouldn’t it be great to have a friend like that, somebody who’d always have my back. And you were—well, no offense, Steve, but Cap was kind of larger than life. I looked up to you, probably to an embarrassing degree, but Bucky was the one I always wanted to be friends with. He was just a normal guy sticking by his friend and doing amazing things along the way, he was… real.”

“And I wasn’t real,” Steve says. His tone is very flat, but his eyes are soft and hurt, like he really cares what Tony thinks of him.

“Well no,” Tony says. “You were a hero and I was a little kid. I’d never really _met_ you; I only knew you from comic books and my dad’s war stories. But it's different now that I've been here, now that I've met you. It’s been… It’s been really nice finding out that you _are_ real, Steve.” He’s looking right into Steve’s clear, azure eyes, trying to make him believe it.

Steve holds his eyes for a long moment, smiling faintly. The beginning of a flush starts in his cheeks and Tony forces himself to look away. He can’t let himself start to _like_ Steve much more than he already does. He looks shamefacedly at the ground, curling in on himself and thinking of Bucky’s smile instead, as if that could clear away the fact that he’d already been _looking_ at Steve’s smile.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tony notices Steve hunching a little and looking down, too, but he's probably still trying to deal with being a _historical figure_ , that's all. That has to be all it is.


	6. The Past, Day 5

Tony wakes the next day, knowing that it is Bucky’s last day. Today, Bucky will make the last choice of his life for sixty years. Today, Bucky will defend Steve to the end, and he will fall.

To his own surprise, Tony finds that he has made peace with this fact.

Well, made peace is the wrong term. But he knows Bucky, knows him well, and he knows that Bucky would never leave Steve on this mission, even knowing the stakes. Bucky's told him as much—that except for the innocent deaths involved, he'd take Hydra's torture again for Steve's sake. And Tony knows that what happened to Bucky was, more or less, a freak accident, not a risk inherent in any part of the mission strategy, so there’s nothing for him to fix.

Even if he tried, it's overwhelmingly likely that nothing would be different as a result. Reed Richards has looked into dozens of other universes and other timelines, and all of them have a Winter Soldier. If it's not Bucky, it'll be someone else, and Bucky would kill him if he let anyone else go through what he did with Hydra. Tony can't change things.

Mostly, Tony finds himself wishing he could warn Steve, save him the shock if not the pain. But then Steve would call off the mission, and Zola would never be caught, and the Red Skull wouldn’t be at his base when Steve shows up the next day to destroy it.

Basically Tony has to do absolutely nothing today.

He rolls over in bed and wishes for a drink.

 

*

 

A little later in the morning, Tony finds the will to get out of bed. There are still things he can do, things he should do.

There are also things he definitely shouldn’t do, but is going to do anyway because he can’t help himself. Things like make a stupid excuse to see Bucky Barnes one last time before he falls into Hydra’s grasp. He wishes he could kiss him, give him one last moment to remember him by, but even he’s not that stupid. This Bucky doesn’t know him yet, and would probably be more creeped out than anything.

Howard’s clearance goes a long way, so Tony makes up a reason to sit in on the Commandos' mission briefing. He sits in the corner, back from the rest of them, and watches without saying a word as Steve explains the mission in the mountains to them.

They’re the _Howling Commandos_ , and once upon a time Tony would have been beyond excited about that, but right now all he can muster is a halfhearted kind of dread. They don’t know what they’re about to lose, but Tony does. Tony spends the whole meeting looking at Bucky surreptitiously and rubbing compulsive circles over the box in his pocket. In this setting, Bucky is has a serious calm about him, but it doesn’t truly dampen his spirits. Every now and then, he slips a joke into the discussion just to make the other men smile. His sense of humor is dirtier here in the forties, oddly enough, but it's also less cutting. To Tony, who is used to the sparing, razor-sharp wit of the Winter Soldier, this Bucky comes off so _gentle_.

This Bucky is Sergeant Barnes, taking care of his men. It’s good to see it. Tony doesn’t get to often, at home, because Bucky’s become so much more reserved—especially in public—but he gets like this more and more as he becomes more comfortable with the Avengers. Not the same gentleness, but the same caring protectiveness for his team.

A feeling rises in Tony’s heart, and he wonders if there’s a word for nostalgia in reverse. Bucky always cares so deeply, for everyone, and Tony counts himself lucky to be somewhere near the top of that list. Maybe not the very top, not now that Tony knows Bucky loves Steve too, but up there somewhere. Tony wonders if Bucky misses him, and then bites the inside of his own cheek hard. Of course Bucky misses him. He hopes Bucky's doing okay, though. He's had enough pain in his life, and Tony doesn't want to cause any more.

When the briefing ends, the Commandos break to gather their gear and have a last few minutes to themselves before they head out. The mission itself will be in a few hours, once they arrive, and the flight into the area shouldn’t take long with the clear weather they’re having this morning.

Tony can’t believe he’s thinking about the _weather_ of all things.

“Barnes,” he finds himself saying. Damn. It just slipped out without his permission, but now Bucky is turning back to look at him with a questioning glint in his eye. From the door, Steve is giving them an odd look. For a few terrifying seconds, Tony’s pulse quickens as he casts about for something to say, anything to justify holding Bucky back after the briefing, until finally he hits on the lamest but probably the only likely excuse. “How’s the rifle working out?”

“Didn’t get too long to practice yesterday,” Bucky says, one shoulder rolling noncommittally, “but it seems pretty swell. Thanks, Stark.”

“You’re welcome,” Tony says helplessly. He struggles think of something to say that would justify keeping Bucky longer, but nothing comes to mind. What's the point of being a genius, he wonders, if you can't come up with a good excuse to see your boyfriend off to battle? Belatedly, he realizes that his mouth is hanging open slightly, which is apparently becoming a pattern with them. What a way to make a second first impression. Feeling vaguely humiliated, Tony snaps his jaw shut.

Bucky is looking at him oddly. Not... not suspiciously or anything, but there is an unreadable expression in his quick eyes. Well, unreadable to most people; Tony has gotten really good at reading blank, internal looks since he fell in love with the Winter Soldier. This look means that Bucky knows something, but it's incomplete, and he's trying to figure the rest out. So fast Tony almost misses it, Bucky's eyes flick from Tony in front of him to Steve beside him and back. His expression shifts almost imperceptibly, like he's satisfied with whatever he'd been working out, and he nods conspiratorially at Tony. Like they've just made some secret agreement. Tony just looks back and tries to silently convey his questioning.

"You know, my buddy here's real famous now," Bucky says, with affected pride. Or real. It's hard to tell when he's talking about Steve. "Everybody knows he can beat just about anybody who's bad, slinging that shield of his around."

"Sure, everybody knows Cap," Tony agrees, baffled.

"Thing is, he ain't got the first clue about how to protect himself with it. Just other people." Bucky tilts his head to angle a long-suffering look at the man in question. Steve opens his mouth, seeming affronted, but he doesn't interrupt. "That's where you an' me come in. Look after this idiot while he's too busy looking after everybody else."

The way Bucky says that last sentence, it's not clear whether he means it as an explanation or an instruction. Maybe both. It seems like an odd request to make of Howard, if that's what it is, but Tony just nods and gives a sloppy salute in acknowledgement. Bucky responds with a sharp nod of his own, gratified.

"Time to go, Buck," Steve says, taking it as the end of the conversation. Bucky follows Steve out without looking back; his eyes are forward and his shoulders are angled so that he can cover Steve, and it's not surprising in the least. Tony does notice one thing, though.

As Bucky leaves with Steve, there’s just the slightest hitch in his step. Nothing major, nothing the Bucky of the future would even allow to be detectable, but present all the same. It’s the kind of limp that Tony knows, knows intimately, although recently it’s mostly been _himself_ who’s been sporting that kind of limp.

Bucky is walking the walk of the incredibly well-fucked, and all Tony can think is that he’s glad Bucky has _something_ good to remember as he goes into the dark.

 

*

 

After that, Tony hides in his lab. He puts the final touches on his plane-controller; all it needs now is a steady hand to install it into the controls of the Red Skull’s plane, and it’ll be all set to bring the plane down harmlessly in the arctic.

There. Done. The plan is complete, and with a day and a half to spare. He should feel better about that than he does, or maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe it’s exactly right that he feels awful about the whole situation, even the part of it that he managed to accomplish exactly according to plan. Coming here was such a _stupid_ idea, he can’t even believe himself. He didn’t think through any part of this. The only reason he even thought far enough ahead to take care of Howard was because of his goddamn daddy issues, and he didn’t even manage to figure out a perfect solution to _that_.

It hasn’t escaped him that Howard is going to unfreeze to find himself in a closet, missing a week of time, just in time to learn that Bucky Barnes is dead, and Captain America nearly died. Hell, Tony is probably causing his own daddy issues right now, just one step removed.

He should break the time-field generator, short it out. Free Howard and explain things to him, hope that he understands enough to not get Tony killed. Give Howard a prayer of being able to make sense of his own world in a few days. Tony should do that, he should, it would be the right thing to do, but—

He’s a damned coward is what. He remembers what Howard was like, and he’s afraid that he won’t be able to make him see. He’s afraid that Howard will stop him from saving Steve’s life. Tony knows what he should do, but he also knows that he’s not going to do it. So what if he’s making Howard into the kind of man who can never have a truly good relationship with his son? The only person it really harms is Tony himself.

He’s buying Steve’s life with his own trauma. And he realizes, with a sick sort of feeling, that Bucky is doing the exact same thing, right now.

Is Steve’s life really worth all that pain?

The thought has crossed Tony’s mind before he can stop it, and it makes him want to kick himself. Maybe once, years ago, he could have thought that with impunity. Back when Captain America was just an idea who was already dead, who had _been_ dead for years. Maybe before he met Bucky, before he decided to go back in time and change the past for the man he’d fallen in love with. But that’s a big maybe.

And in any case, he can’t, now. Not now that he’s actually _met_ Cap, and definitely not now that the noble Captain America has become _Steve_ to him. Steve who comes to hang out in the lab with him and gush about the science of the future, fascinated by the science fiction changed to science fact.

Steve who smiles at him and believes in him and _sees_ him for himself, as far as anyone really can. Steve who blushes so _prettily_ when he feels awkward.

There are so many things Tony should have thought about, should have foreseen, before he made this trip to the past. He should have considered the effects that his actions would have on Howard, and he should have researched the base he’d be staying at much further. He should have tried to look more like his father and he should have known how Aunt Peggy would expect him to act. He should have considered the way he would feel about Bucky’s “death,” even knowing that it would be false and temporary. He should have thought a lot more things through than he actually did.

The past has only had one surprise that Tony can feel in any way justified about, one thing he knows he could never have predicted. The irony is almost painful, though—the one thing he doesn’t have to feel bad about, at least from a logical standpoint, is the one that’s hurting him on the deepest level.

Because the one thing Tony could never have predicted was that he would find himself falling for Steve Rogers. Hard and fast enough to make the word _fall_ seem uncomfortably accurate, because Tony couldn’t stop himself no matter how often he tried to claw his eyes off of Steve’s body, his mind off of Steve’s heart.

He tries to reassure himself that it isn’t _all_ wrong, at least not completely. At least he hasn’t _done_ anything with Steve. At least Steve doesn’t reciprocate.

 

*

 

Tony can’t resolve his feelings in his favorite manner—curled up with Bucky and talking about things only as much as they absolutely have to, preferring to speak by touch and movement instead. He can’t run from his feelings in his former manner—he’s been sober a long time, and he doesn’t want to give up now. That’s one thing, at least, that he can still be proud of. No matter how much he wants to, he hasn’t taken a drink yet, and he’s not going to.

So instead, Tony avoids his feelings in his usual manner. He drowns them in science.

He has his plane-controlling device, or rather his plane-crashing device, and he knows all the programming sequences he needs to in order to bring the plane down the way it’s supposed to be.

But there’s no harm in having a failsafe, too.

Tony thinks about his time-field generator, already a kind of failsafe in its own right, and he carefully, carefully, gets to work. What he needs to do isn’t complicated; if he shuts down the device’s connection to the time platform without deactivating it, it will continue to operate until he shuts it down manually. In essence, whatever he freezes with this generator will remain frozen in time until Tony himself comes to short it out. If he can be brave enough to release Howard from the time-field, Tony will have the technology to hand to make sure that Steve _can't_ die in the crash.

He would prefer to actually save Steve’s life, to get him off of the plane and bring him safely home, where he can see the end of the war and move on and maybe even find someone new and raise a family. Tony would like for Steve to get to know some semblance of normalcy in his too-strange life.

But if it comes down to it, if there is no other way, Tony can use the failsafe generator to preserve him. It will be a kind of living death, with no warmth or movement or even a definite end to the span of frozen years, but at least Steve will be alive in some sense of the word. At least it will not _necessarily_ be permanent.

Tony himself will be safe, he knows, even on the plane. The time platform will pull him back home right before the plane is set to crash, so he won’t be killed as it strikes the ground.

And if necessary, Tony will slap the failsafe generator on Steve, and he won’t be killed, either.

 

*

 

Tony works late into the night, tinkering and perfecting and very, very carefully making sure not to touch the active side device himself. Even attached to Howard, the generator is still active, and now it doesn’t even have the one-week cutoff period in place. When he takes it off of Howard, it'll be even more dangerous, so he's not going to do that until the very last second. If he can find the strength to do it at all. He is oblivious to sight and sound outside of his work, and he's doing his best to block off all other thought.

But there is a lump in his pocket that seems to grow heavier every second.

Maybe even now, Bucky is being taken from the mountains by Hydra. Maybe even now he is being hurt and the remains of his mangled arm are being _removed_ to make way for the heavy metal monstrosity that he will keep for years until Tony realizes how much it’s hurting him and makes him a new one—but no. Tony isn’t thinking about this.

He isn't thinking about what Bucky is probably undergoing right now, and he _definitely_ isn't thinking about how much he wants _his_ Bucky, his own slowly-recovering Future Bucky. He isn't thinking about the way he's been locked in his own thoughts all day, drowning in regrets and failures, and the way _his_ Bucky was always so good at knowing when he was getting like that and taking him out of his head for a while. He isn't thinking about doing the same for Bucky when memories of his brainwashed days get to be too much.

Tony isn't thinking about how happy they had been, or the question he had been thinking of asking. He isn't. He _can't_.

He surges back into his work, and doesn’t let himself imagine anything, not past, present, future, speculation, or truth.

 

*

 

Very late at night, there is sound. A plane has landed, people are coming into the base. Tony comes out of the haze of his work and looks up.

Outside, the soldiers sound briefly excited. It isn’t like the awe of seeing Captain America returning, alone and noble in the sunset. This is a reunion of friends, the Commandos being embraced by the men who respect them almost as legends even now, even if they’ll never act like it until they’re old and asked about it by biographers.

But then, the sounds of happy reunion falter and a hush falls. The soldiers have counted the returning Commandos and they have come up one short.

The Howling Commandos are back, but Bucky Barnes is not.

Tony grips the box in his pocket so tightly that his knuckles turn white, and he feels a burning behind his eyes.


	7. The Past, Day 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry.

Alone in his lab, gripping the little vibranium object so hard that his fingers are cramping, Tony realizes that this is just one more thing he failed to foresee. Outside, he can hear the aftermath of Bucky’s death, the hush and the anger and the confusion in the base that comes when everyone realizes that the Howling Commandos are not, in fact, immortal. Outside, somewhere among the shocked soldiers, one of them is hurting more than the rest. Outside, Steve Rogers is grieving. Inside, Tony is the only one who knows that Bucky Barnes is still alive, and he never considered the way it would tear him up inside to keep it to himself.

Part of that is because of Tony’s new feelings, but only part. Most of the gut-wrenching internal conflict is because of Tony’s own stupidity.

“I should have predicted this” has become his mantra. He’s smart enough to predict the outcomes of events and actions, and the ways that those outcomes might be changed by his own actions. So many times on this trip he's figured out what was going to happen, but only at the point where anything he could do about it would be too little, too late. Everything's too late. He’s _smart_ enough to anticipate so much, so why hadn’t he? Well, that’s an easy question. He had been too _lazy_ to figure out what was to come. That’s no excuse.

There’s another sensation that Tony has become intimately acquainted with: the moment of clarity.

When Tony was captured, he’d had one. He had realized that his weapons were going to the wrong people because he’d been too lazy to actually look after his own goddamn company the way he should, the way he had a _responsibility_ to do.

When Tony woke up in bed with Bucky the first time, he’d had one. He had woken up in bed with someone he liked _so much_ , even loved, if he’d been brave enough to admit it, and he had looked over at the man and found that he had _absolutely no memory_ of how they had gotten there. Bucky had smiled and told Tony he loved him, and Tony had gaped like a fish, mouth working soundlessly as he grasped desperately for memories that just weren’t there. Bucky had looked at his uncomprehending expression and his face had just _crumpled_. He had looked so defeated that Tony had started to cry. That was when he’d realized he had a problem with alcohol.

And now, when Tony realizes just how _badly_ he’s screwed up coming to the past, he’s having another moment of clarity. He has the ability to predict the future—he’s smart enough to figure out what will happen depending on his choices in most cases—but he hasn’t been _using_ it like he should. He already knows that he has to do anything he _can_ do to help people. But now, he realizes that he’s been neglecting most of the resources of his brain.

He _can_ foresee problems, and he can try to fix problems that he knows about. So it follows that he _has to_ predict what he can, to fix it before it even happens. Like staying sober, and like taking care of his company correctly, and like being Iron Man, this is a _responsibility_.

Futurism, he thinks it’s called. Predicting the future based on current trends and actions, and doing something about it.

His first prediction takes about four neurons to come up with, though. It’s obvious, and it’s obvious that it’s going to hurt like hell when it happens.

Steve Rogers is going to ask him about Bucky’s death. And Tony can’t tell him that Bucky’s not dead, not while the Red Skull’s plane still threatens most of the world.

 

*

 

It’s not long before Tony’s prediction comes true. He’s been sitting and waiting anxiously, trying to tinker with something but largely failing, when Steve comes in the door, sans the stars and stripes.

The idea that Tony would need to defend himself when Steve came to accuse him is gone between one breath and the next.

Because _God_ , Steve looks awful. His steps are shuffling and haphazard, his hands are trembling at his sides, and he’s hunched in on himself in a posture that would be more at home on a man half his size. That’s what he is right now, Tony realizes; this is Steve stripped bare of all his strength, leaving only the small man huddling in the huge body. Steve looks up at Tony, and it’s obvious that he’s been crying. Even if his face weren’t blotchy and red, there are fresh tear tracks on his cheeks.

Steve is grieving, Tony thinks. He knew that, but somehow he didn’t quite _know_ it until he saw it. His heart wrenches helplessly, wishing he could just _fix_ everything.

How ironic that that’s exactly what he’d come here to do, to just reach into Bucky’s past and _fix_ things. How arrogant that seems, now.

“Tony,” Steve says hoarsely. It sounds like he’s asking for something, begging, but Tony doesn’t know what he wants. He stands and puts a hand on Steve’s arm, gently, soft enough that he can pull away in a moment if Steve doesn’t want to be touched. But Steve sags into the touch, and a rough noise comes unbidden from his throat. “Tony,” he says again.

Tony doesn’t say anything. He just leads Steve to sit on the lab bench and takes the seat beside him. Steve is still shaking, so Tony moves his hand from Steve’s arm to the middle of his back and rubs little circles with his thumb. When Steve allows the touch, Tony puts his other arm up, too, hugging him as though his human arms had the strength to hold Steve together.

It’s not enough, it can’t ever be enough. Tony can’t imagine what it would be like if _he_ lost Bucky, but he doesn’t even know if he’d survive.

Steve collapses further under Tony’s hands, and he looks so _small_. Young and small and broken. He makes a sound, and then another, and then—oh, God, he’s crying again. Steve is crying in his arms and there’s nothing that Tony can do to make him feel any better. It hits Tony all at once, that he's not falling for Steve at all, he's already _fallen_. He's fallen so fast his head is spinning with it.

Tony loves him, God help him but he loves him, and it’s awful to sit here loving him and being useless all the same.

“B-Bucky—“ Steve starts, and he has to draw a harsh wet breath before he can continue. “Bucky’s dead. I tried, with Peggy, I tried but I can’t get—I can’t get drunk, Tony. I can’t get drunk and he’s _dead_ and I—“ He can’t seem to keep talking after that, his whole frame wracked with his sobs. His face mashes into Tony’s chest when he leans into him, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care.

“It’s—“ _it’s okay_ is a blatant lie and Tony swallows it down. “I’m, I’m here,” he says instead.

And that seems to be all the permission Steve needs to lean fully into him, strong arms coming up to wrap around Tony and clutch at the fabric of his shirt. _Physical comfort_ , Tony thinks, and okay, he can do this. Maybe. He holds Steve tighter and makes his own body soft against Steve, like he’s holding him everywhere they touch. He knows bodies pretty well, at least.

The touch makes Steve cry harder at first—makes it feel safe to cry, Tony thinks—but then he starts to calm gradually, taking heaving unsteady breaths through his mouth.

“I loved him.” Steve’s words are quiet and desolate where he breathes them into Tony’s shirt.

“I know,” Tony says, helplessly.

“No, I—I really loved him, I was in love with him,” Steve breathes. Oh. So he’s doing the confessing thing. Tony doesn’t know how to handle this.

“I know,” Tony says again. He pulls Steve a little closer to him, just to reassure him that he doesn’t care. Only the worst kind of scum could try to hand Steve a blue ticket when he’s like this, and he can’t let Steve have even one more thing to worry about. What Tony can do, he must do.

Then Steve shudders once more, rallies himself, and surges up to kiss Tony.

The kiss has no finesse on either side, messy and wet with Steve’s tears, and both of them are shaking. Their noses bump and so do their teeth, and Steve’s fingers are digging painfully into Tony’s back. The physical details are all that Tony can process for several seconds. He might be in shock, he thinks.

“Steve,” Tony says, pushing his shoulders away as gently as he can. “You’re grieving.”

“Please,” Steve begs. His eyes are watery and desperate. “Please, I, I like you. Please. I need—I just need—“

You just need something to hold onto, Tony thinks. You need something to hold onto, and you think that something is me.

“Steve, I don’t think you’re thinking clearly,” Tony says gently. He _wants_ to hold onto Steve and make him feel better any way that he can, but he knows that it’s probably the worst thing he could do right now. Steve’s probably not thinking _at all_ , just desperate for anything that his animal brain tells him will make the pain better, and he’ll regret it more than anything if he looks back on the day his lover died and remembers running straight into another man’s arms.

“I don’t understand,” Steve says wetly. “Don’t you—don’t you, the way you look at me, don’t you _like_ me?”

Oh, God, Steve has _noticed_. Tony’s hands twitch convulsively.

“I _do_ like you,” he breathes. There’s a burning in his eyes. “I really do. But I don’t think you want this, not really. And it’s—it’s a bad idea.”

Steve frowns, looking pained. “Your lover,” he remembers. “I’m sorry.”

“No, actually, I think he’d want me to do anything I could for you. Anything that would be good for you. I just… I’m not sure it’s good for you to do this so soon after Bucky fell.” Tony knows the moment the words leave his mouth that he's let something awful slip. It's the wording Bucky always uses, talking about his own past, and Tony's so used to hearing it that way that he just regurgitated it on autopilot. He tenses in anticipation, gut twisting as he watches a horrible kind of realization dawn on Steve’s face.

“You knew!” he cries, and he shoves Tony away from him, hard. Tony falls off of the bench and lands in a graceless heap on the floor. “You _knew_ he was going to die!”

Tony doesn’t say anything. He can’t deny it, anyway.

“You knew he was going to die and you let us go out anyway, like nothing was wrong! You sent him to die!” Steve’s shouting is low-voiced and pained. “ _Why_?” he demands. His fists are shaking with emotion at his sides, like he’s trying hard to control himself.

“It was necessary,” Tony says, and he hates every word. There _are_ no words that make it okay. No words except perhaps “He’s not dead,” and Tony can’t say those until after he’s sure that the plane has been taken care of.

“Necessary,” Steve bites out.

“There are things you don’t know, things that are only set in motion because he—he died. There’s no guarantee that we could carry out our plan without all of the lead-up events in their places.” And _God_ , that sounds so awful, so clinical. Tony clutches at his pocket and fails to meet Steve’s eyes. “I had to let him fall, to make sure that other people live.”

“So you just counted up the numbers and probabilities, right? Just counted out human lives and decided for yourself,” Steve snarls. Tony flinches, but doesn’t contradict him. He knows how arrogant and self-centered he’s been. He knows how ugly his utilitarian morality is. “At least you picked the bigger column in your bloody ledger, huh? It doesn’t matter if you let a man die as long as the _number_ is bigger on the other side. I hope that makes you feel good about it,” he says, spitting the words like poison.

Steve storms out, wretched and furious and grieving.

“It doesn’t,” Tony says to the closed door. He didn’t cry at his own father’s funeral, but he thinks he might be crying now. He hurts too much to be sure.

 

*

 

When he leaves the lab, it’s early morning. The first thing he does is find Aunt Peggy.

“I think I want a family at some point,” he tells her, putting on his Howard accent very carefully.

“Thinking about your mortality?” she asks cynically. Aunt Peggy was never particularly close to any of the Commandos individually, but she was as much a part of their group as any woman could have been in World War Two, and Tony knows she was bitterly distraught when Bucky fell. He tries to be gentle.

“Maybe a little,” he says. “I want a family, but I don’t think I’ll make a very good father.”

“Never would have pinned you for it,” Peggy admits. She still hasn't looked up at Tony, but he can hear a catch in her voice that suggests that she doesn't want him to see her crying. It makes it easier to hold his cover, Tony thinks, and then he feels sick at himself.

Her grief is just fine with him, so long as it serves his purposes. He'll just go on letting everyone hurt like this, as long as he gets what he wants out of it. Revulsion and self-hatred twist in his gut. Steve was right about him, he was right about everything.

“Do me a favor, Carter?” Tony asks. He tries to make it casual, but probably fails. Oh well. Howard would probably sound the same, if he were in this position. “If I’m—If I’m doing a bad job, would you…” _would you help_ , Tony thinks, but that’s probably wrong. Aunt Peggy wasn’t really a mothering type, and anyway it’s not fair to ask her to make up for all of Howard’s failures. “Whack me upside the head?” he finishes. That was more Aunt Peggy’s style.

“Sure, Howard,” she answers, and she turns back to her paperwork. She’s grieving, so he goes back out to give her space. He shuts the door as quietly as he can and leaves her in peace.

Well, that’s one thing taken care of. The second won’t be quite so easy, because the second is (rightfully) furious with him.

 

*

 

Tony stands outside the door of Steve’s assigned quarters for a full minute, debating with himself. He needs to talk to Steve, but surely it’s too soon… His knuckles vacillate between raised and lowered as he tries to make up his mind whether or not to knock.

Steve opens the door before he can decide.

“I could hear you standing there,” he says flatly.

“Yeah,” Tony says nonsensically. He clasps his hands behind his back to keep them from betraying his nerves. “Can I…?”

“Come in,” says Steve. He closes the door behind Tony, and then the two of them just look awkwardly at each other as Tony tries to work up the will to say the words he had planned. Again, Steve cuts him off before he can. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have shoved you. I was angry, but that’s no excuse.”

“It’s nothing,” Tony says, confused. It hadn’t even occurred to him that they might talk about that. “I just, I wanted to make sure that… well, Red Skull is still a problem. We have to take down his plane tomorrow, and I wanted to make sure that we would still, you know…”

“Of course, Tony. I’m still... angry with you, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a good plan. We’ll take down the plane together, and then—“

“And then I’ll be home. It’s automatic.”

“Good,” Steve says. It sounds like the words are forced from him.

“Yeah,” Tony agrees. Steve will be better off once Tony's gone.

It feels awkward and horrible, but they’ve reforged something like a partnership between them. Tony just hopes it’s strong enough to get them through the mission. He doesn’t think he could bear it if this fight between them caused the mission to fail, caused Steve to fall.

 

*

 

They don’t speak for the rest of the day. Steve is tied up in mission planning, convincing those on high to allow him to run a next-day invasion of the Red Skull’s base in order to take out the plane carrying his weapons of mass destruction.

Tony, on the other hand, spends the rest of the day in the lab. He isn’t tinkering, though. The engineering parts of this are done.

No, he’s working on his newest resolution, to respond to the things he knows will happen. He’s failed at that pretty spectacularly so far, but there are a few things he can fix. He knows that Howard will be shocked and probably devastated to learn that he lost time, and he knows that Steve will be ruined and depressed for a long while, forced to live knowing the man he loves is dead. Those are things Tony can do something about.

So Tony spends the rest of the day drafting letters: one to Howard, and one to Steve.


	8. The Past, Day 7

Steve’s side of the plan is finalized sometime in the afternoon. This mostly seems to consist of Steve bringing the full fury of a vengeful Captain America to bear on his higher-ups, in order to get their forces in place by the _next_ afternoon. It’s not easy, but ignoring Captain America isn’t easy, either. At least an assault on the Red Skull's base isn't completely out of the blue; this is just earlier than anyone expected. By the small hours of the morning, everything is ready, for both of them, and so Tony forces himself to sleep.

Sleep is almost the last thing he wants to do right now, but his sleep schedule has been even more of a mess than usual since coming here, and the _very_ last thing he wants is to screw up the mission tomorrow. So he sleeps.

When he wakes in the morning, it’s with the familiar feeling of not actually being rested at all, but it’ll have to be good enough. It’s his last day in the forties, the day he goes against the Red Skull and saves Captain America from his heroic death. Today will either be a very good day or a very bad day for Tony's history as well as the world's, depending on how well he actually manages to stick to what he planned out for himself.

The first part of the plan, he thinks, might actually be the hardest.

 

*

 

Tony stands in front of the locked closet door for longer than he wants to admit before he even puts a hand on the handle. Somehow, opening the closet to do work on the time-field generator is completely different from opening the closet to unfreeze his father from stasis.

But he can do this. He can do this. Don’t cop out now, Stark. Steve’s counting on you.

He doesn’t want to let Steve down.

It’s that thought that gives Tony the strength to turn the handle and open the door. Howard is still standing there, in the same attitude Tony had left him in. His face is upset; his hands are defensive. But now, when he looks at his father frozen in this expression of anger, Tony doesn’t feel like a scared little boy again. Howard looks… well, he looks kind of pitiful, face twisted in impotent frustration and confusion. Helpless. And, well, Tony might not _like_ Howard still, but he understands what it’s like to be unable to fight back, unable to do anything with his anger.

Something in Tony melts a little, and then it’s almost easy to reach out and briefly short the generator, just long enough to get it off of Howard’s chest and slip it into his pocket.

“—What are you doing here?” Howard asks, as though he hadn’t even stopped speaking between now and six days ago. His eyes widen as he takes in the fact that he’s moved, and he actually… he looks a little scared. “How did I get here?”

“I froze you in time for a couple of days. I took your place, but I don’t think I changed anything major for you. I’m—I’m your son, from the future. I know how that sounds, but it’s the truth.” Tony just stands there for a moment, letting Howard search his face to find the truth there. He’s braced for a punch, but Howard doesn’t throw one. Howard just stands there, something between disbelief and fear on his face. His eyes dart back and forth between Tony’s face and the closet around him. He’s a smart guy, Howard is. He can put two and two together.

“I came back in time to save Captain America,” Tony says. “I actually have to leave to go do that right about now.”

“But—that can’t be all of it, it can’t!” Howard exclaims. He reaches forward to Tony. “Tell me what’s going on!”

“Here,” Tony says, and hands him the letter with his name on it. “This will explain everything I can. But right now, Steve needs me. I _know_ you understand that. Sometimes you feel like he’s the only good thing you did in your life, and you wish you could help him more than you do.”

Howard’s jaw slackens and he nods, wordlessly. What held for Steve holds for Howard: people aren’t used to being told their personal preferences by random strangers.

“I know that feeling, and that’s why I have to save him now. I _have_ to. But you have to know…” Tony takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. “He’s not the _only_ good thing you ever did.”

The corner of Tony’s mouth quirks up in a small, self-deprecating smile, and he leaves.

Howard watches him go.

 

*

 

“Where were you?” Steve snaps when Tony arrives. He looks like he’s anxious to get going and more than a little eager to avenge Bucky. “Never mind. Let’s go.”

“Hang on,” Tony says. He hands him the second of his letters. “Open this after Skull is down and you’re safe, and not before, okay?” Steve nods and tucks the letter into a pocket of his uniform, far enough under the other layers that it should be safe.

And then they’re off. Tony’s a little anxious, too, but he knows what he’s doing. He’s read about the original operation, and he knows how well-planned it was. It rested pretty heavily on Steve’s personal abilities, but then, so does everything Steve does these days. The only rogue element in the works is Tony, but he won’t be getting in their way, or at least not much.

While everyone else storms he front door of Skull’s base, Tony will go in the side door. So to speak. The hangar is large, but most of the troops will be distracted taking care of the rampant supersoldier in their base. And, you know, the invading horde. If he’s careful, Tony’s new sneaking skills will get him onto the plane without even being detected.

Everything is ready to go by the afternoon. Once things are in position, Steve heads for the front gate with a look in his eye that’s stormy and bordering on fey. Tony almost feels sorry for the Hydra soldiers who get in his way. Almost.

 

*

 

In the case of this particular Hydra base, the phrase “side door” is pretty literal. It’s a small escape tunnel, probably built for the Red Skull himself in case he ever felt the need to bail on all of his loyal soldiers when they found themselves under attack. It’s pretty well hidden, but being a genius from the future who’s related to Howard Stark has a few perks. Like having caught a glimpse of a few particular floor plans as a young boy.

Tony doesn’t have perfect recall, but it’s good enough to get him to the door. There are two guards trying to hide in the trees just outside it; he takes aim carefully and fires once, twice. The guards fall.

Tony kneels next to them for a moment, just long enough to steal a helmet. His clothes aren’t _exactly_ Hydra-issue, but they’re dark and military-looking, so they’ll have to do.

Inside the door, Tony makes himself as fully aware of his body as he knows how to be. It’s strange doing this outside of the armor, but he can do it. He controls his breathing, his gait, the way his knees want to click if he moves them wrong. His synthetic heart is pounding in his chest, but it’s with a strange feeling of something like exhilaration.

In an odd sort of way, he feels like he’s not alone. Like every time he remembers a little bit of Bucky’s advice, Bucky’s training, he has a little bit of Bucky with him, too. Like when Bucky stepped in unnecessarily close to his back to correct his posture—only, when that happened, they didn’t stay focused on the training much longer. Tony suppresses a shiver, and continues on down the tunnel.

After a while, it widens and branches—the right-hand branch goes up towards the command rooms of the base, where Skull is, and the left-hand branch goes down, towards the hangar.

Tony sets an explosive charge to knock out the right-hand tunnel and block Skull’s escape that way, and then he heads off down the left-hand side. It opens into a tiny, unobtrusive alcove in the wide-open hangar. It’s almost imperceptible against the rough-hewn walls of the place, which makes Tony briefly grateful. It gives him a minute to scout out what he’s going to do before he does.

The place is still teeming with soldiers, but not nearly so many as there were before. Tony has only a moment before they come back, though—before long, the hangar will be playing host to a massive firefight, and he can’t afford to get caught in the middle of it. He reaches up to check that his stolen Hydra helmet is settled correctly on his head, and then he starts off across the hangar. Near the edges, where the concentration of Hydra soldiers is greatest, Tony uses everything Bucky ever told him to slip past them on light feet, but once he approaches the middle of the room—

Well. He’ll have to rely on his _own_ training for this.

A big part of being a businessman is acting like a confident bastard even when you have no idea what you’re doing, and Tony has it down to an _art_. He doesn’t just walk across the hangar to the plane, he _struts_ , he acts like he has every right to be there, doing exactly what he’s doing, and anyone who says otherwise can stuff it. He feels twitchy and wound up the whole time, but he pushes those feelings down. Even the smallest fault in his body language could get him caught and shot, just as surely as a word of American-accented English would.

When Tony finally climbs the stairs into the plane unchecked, he breathes a heavy sigh of relief and almost collapses against the inner wall of the plane.

But he can’t afford to lounge about—he can hear the sounds of explosions getting louder upstairs. He pushes off the wall, discards his helmet, and jogs over to the cockpit. It’s not too complicated compared to what Tony’s used to, but then—it is the forties, after all. He pulls out his controller and a screwdriver and gets to work.

 

*

 

“And what would you be doing on my plane?” an angry German voice asks, and Tony’s heart sinks right back into his stomach. Red Skull must have slipped Steve somehow. Outside the plane, the hangar is starting to fill with commotion: gunshots, screams, and the weird sci-fi sound of ancient-history ray guns.

“Nothing at all,” he says. It’s technically true; he just finished the installation a few seconds earlier.

“And yet for some reason, I don’t believe you, American.”

Well, it was worth a shot.

Tony doesn’t have a chance to say anything else; Skull grabs him by the scruff and throws him bodily into the back of the plane. Tony lands heavily, cracks his head against a metal strut, and the world goes dark.

 

*

 

“Tony. Tony. Wake up!”

Tony regains consciousness to the feeling of someone shaking his shoulder carefully but not very gently. The first thing he registers is the vibration of running engines, smooth like an airplane. Then there’s a rush of cold, cold air over his face, and a warmth where someone is touching him. There’s an ache in his head, too, and he’s none too happy to register _that_ as he comes back to himself. He groans and shoves himself up on one arm.

“Tony, do you have your transmitter?” Steve asks, and all at once awareness comes back in full.

“Steve? What the hell are you doing here?” Tony demands. “You’re not supposed to be on this plane!”

“Red Skull damaged the controls, so I need to know that you still have some way of controlling this bird,” Steve says, ignoring him completely. Tony wants to be kind of outraged at that, but Steve does have a point, so he digs in his pockets until he finds the transmitter. He tugs it out and waves it triumphantly.

“Tada! Now will you tell me why the _hell_ you got on a plane you knew was set to kill you?”

Steve hauls him to his feet in lieu of answering immediately. Tony just scowls and waits impatiently.

“I chased the Skull down to the hangar. He had the Tesseract, he had _unlimited power_ , according to you, and I didn’t know if he would…” Steve pauses, flushes a little. “You were still on board. I… didn’t want to think of what he’d do to you for getting in his way.”

“But you’re furious with me,” Tony says. They’re standing so close that he can see, for the first time, that their heights are probably within an inch of each other. Tony’s head feels kind of fuzzy, but he doesn’t think it’s because of the lump rising on his scalp. “Don’t die for me. You’re furious with me, and you know I’ll go back to my time automatically in a few minutes.”

“You would’ve gone back as a _dead body_ if I hadn’t stopped Skull,” Steve says petulantly. Tony just sighs.

“I guess he and the Tesseract are history now,” he says. It isn’t really a question. He knows his history.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees anyway. “Now we have to crash this plane. How long do we have until you disappear?”

Tony checks his watch. “Fifteen minutes, maybe? I’m set to leave a few moments before they say the plane's transmission ended. Let me just…” He trails off as they head back up towards the cockpit. As it turns out, “damaged the controls” is kind of an understatement. Somehow, Steve and the Red Skull managed to absolutely smash the damned things, leaving all of the pretty button panels unusable.

Well, that’s what the controller was _for_ in the first place. It takes some complicated button-pressing on the transmitter for Tony to establish their present course and speed (toward New York, and _fast_ ), and some more complicated button-pressing to readjust that course. They’re headed for the arctic now, and with a few more tweaks—

“Done,” he declares. He leans over to Steve to point out one button on the transmitter. “Once we’re over ice, hold down this button. The way we’re flying, it should send us straight into a nosedive.”

“Got it,” Steve says. Tony bites his lip.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he begins. Apologies aren’t easy for him—they feel too much like begging for forgiveness he doesn't deserve to be given—but Steve does deserve an apology, so Tony makes it happen. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you from _this,_ ” he gestures at the plane around them, winces, “and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Bucky.”

“I’m... I'm sorry I yelled at you, and shoved you,” Steve returns. It seems like apologies aren't easy for him, either. A week ago, Tony would have guessed it was because Steve almost never has anything to be sorry _for_ , so he's not used to apologies. Now he knows better; Steve is a good man, but he's also a little proud, and a lot bad at communication outside of dramatic speeches. It's a little bit warming, to realize that Tony has come to know him so well in such a short time. Steve continues, awkward and angry, but mostly angry at himself, it seems. “It was out of line. I was angry, but that's no excuse.”

“You might want to hold off on that apology for a second,” says Tony. Yeah, Steve’s probably going to yell again in a few seconds. Tony checks his watch—about six minutes, if he’s estimating correctly. “Bucky’s not dead.”

“ _What_.”

“He’s injured, captive for a long time, but… that’s his story to tell if he wants to, not mine. The point is, by _my_ time, he’s okay, pretty much. And he’s…” Tony takes a deep breath and reaches into his pocket. “Well, he’s that lover I told you about. I came here thinking I was going to save you for him, let him have a little resolution in his past, even if I didn’t know you’d been together. Maybe I was thinking a little of me, too; you were my hero, and all. But then I met you, and, well…” Tony shrugs. “It stopped being about either of us. I’m saving you for _you_ , Steve.”

“I… thanks?” says Steve. God, it’s like he has no ego at all. Or maybe like he’s used to being a little guy frequently dismissed. Or maybe just like a man who's too busy being hung up on the information that his lover is not, in fact, dead, to focus on the sentimental half of that utterance. “You’re really sleeping with Bucky?” he asks, and yep. Option C it is.

“Uh, yeah,” Tony says. He can feel himself flushing a little, and compulsively checks his watch. Five minutes. “I know he probably deserves better, but—“

“No more of that,” Steve says. He puts his hands on Tony’s shoulders, and oh, he's going into dramatic speech mode. Real communication to follow, Tony thinks crazily. “I know I got mad at you yesterday, but Tony… you have to know that what I said about you wasn’t fair. _Especially_ considering what I told you that very first day, about whole cities being worth more than one man’s life. I got to know you pretty well over this last week, and I know you’re a good guy. One of the best.” Steve pauses, breathes deep twice like he’s about to say something difficult or profound. “If Bucky had to be with someone besides me, I’m glad it’s you. Really. And… and that other thing I said, before I lost my head at you? That was true too. I like you. No... I love you, Tony Stark.”

Tony feels frozen. He knows he loves Steve, being with Bucky has taught him pretty well to recognize the feeling, but Steve—

“Steve, you’ve known me for five days,” he says, voice strained.

“They were an important five days,” Steve counters. “ _And_ it turns out that the guy whose judgment I trust most out of anybody loves you too. Maybe it’s not the same... _mature_ kind of feeling I have— _we_ have—for Bucky, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

“I—yeah,” is all Tony can say. He takes a deep breath, mirroring Steve. Three minutes left, he thinks. “Yeah, me too. I love you too.”

Their eyes meet and hold, and they both flush. For the last several days, they’ve been dancing around this, never both looking at the same time, so they—or Tony, at least—feel a little shy about a real, unobstructed gaze. The timidity doesn’t last, though. Steve is the braver of them, the first to let his expression change to real intent as he moves toward Tony.

Their first kiss was fueled by grief and desperation, but this one is different. It comes from a place of reconciliation and newborn love, and it’s so good that it takes Tony’s breath away. He gasps into Steve’s mouth and winds his arms around his neck automatically. Steve’s grip is tight and unyielding on his shoulders, and his mouth is moving insistently. In this, as before, Tony can feel Bucky’s influence—in the way Steve sucks his tongue, the scrape of teeth on lips. His eyes flutter helplessly shut as he realizes it.

Tony feels the need for air almost immediately, but he ignores it. This is too good to break off for something so petty as oxygen, and besides—it might be Steve’s last kiss ever.

“I’m sorry,” he says when he withdraws. One minute.

“What for this time?” Steve says. He sounds a little exasperated—well, it’s not like Tony’s any happier about stopping that kiss.

“For what I’m about to do. I may not be able to save your life, but I can stop you from dying,” Tony says fiercely. Steve looks confused, worried, but mostly worried about Tony, it seems. That doesn’t really matter now, though. “Push the button, Steve.”

“What are you doing?” Steve asks. His thumb hovers over the button, but he doesn’t push it yet. Thirty seconds. They’re running out of time.

“Please,” Tony urges him. It feels like an eternity, but Steve complies, and the plane begins to dip immediately. They both take hold of the console to keep from being thrown backwards into the belly of the plane. It’s faster than freefall, and both of them have to keep a strong grip, but the plane still has time to level out, to land rather than crashing, which would be unacceptable. “Keep holding that button.”

Steve nods. Tony tightens his grip on the console with his left hand, and reaches into his pockets with his right. He reaches past the little box and pulls out the failsafe, struggling against the force of the descent.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and he reaches out to press the active side of the generator to Steve’s chest.

Tony’s gone before he can tell if he’s made contact.


	9. The Present Day, Again

Tony lands painfully on the time platform with a crash. For several seconds, he’s stunned by the impact—he’s probably concussed, it’s not like Red Skull was exactly gentle with him.

“Tony, Tony are you alright?” a voice is saying. It’s very close to his face and it sounds so odd that it takes him several seconds to realize that it’s _Jan_. It sounds close and odd because she’s shrunk down to flutter over his face, getting an up-close look at his pupils, which are almost definitely showing signs of that concussion, going by her expression.

“Nngh,” he replies eloquently.

“Can you sit up?” Jan asks him. Tony’s muscles are aching a bit, but he manages to drag himself into a more or less seated position. Then he takes in the room around him—it’s the workshop, same as he’d left it, but some things have definitely changed.

There’s a surprising amount of food out on his tables, for one. He never keeps much down here except for coffee. And the workshop furnishings have gotten a serious upgrade, for another, now sporting a few comfortable looking chairs that look like they might’ve been dragged down from the library. One of them has a half-folded blanket draped over one of the arms, and there’s a stack of books on the corner of one of the tables. It takes Tony several seconds to realize why, trying to think past the ache in his head.

Bucky.

Bucky’s been worrying about him, of course he has, and he’s moved things down here so that he can keep an eye on the time platform. He’s been watching for Tony’s return.

Which begs the question—where is Bucky _now?_

Tony can see Jan, grown back to ordinary size and kneeling in front of him, and Hank, sitting on one of the benches and fiddling with what looks like a scanner, but there’s no Bucky in sight, despite reading material that is—now that Tony looks closer—definitely in Russian, of which the team has exactly one fluent speaker.

“Bucky?” Tony manages to ask, rubbing at his forehead. The pain is starting to go away now, but it’s still not pleasant.

“He’s been down here all week,” Jan says. “I think when you told him you’d be gone a week he took that as a personal challenge to stay _awake_ that whole time. I finally ordered him off to bed in the middle of the night last night, and he still wouldn’t go until I told him I’d bench him from the team for being too worn out to be any help.”

Oh, God. Tony didn’t even think about how Bucky would be sleeping while he was gone, whether his nightmares would be worse without Tony there to hold him through them.

“Is he okay?” Tony asks anxiously.

“He’ll be fine with a few hours of sleep and a shower,” Jan says, “but he’s really not happy with you for running off into a warzone without your armor.”

Tony’s brain locks up like a rusted gear. All of a sudden his thoughts are a loop of _they know they all know and she's going to have to bench me for sure—_

“Relax, Shellhead. We’re not upset with you for having a secret identity, even if was the most transparent secret identity ever,” Jan reassures him, laughing. “Secret identities are in the Avengers Charter, so I didn't say anything, but I guessed it once Tony Stark stopped being seen with starlets right when Iron Man and the Winter Soldier announced that they were, and I quote, “an us thing now.” It was kind of an open secret.”

"I didn't know!" Hank objects from the bench. That's not very reassuring. Hank's brilliant, but also kind of an idiot sometimes. Well, if this last week has proven anything it's that Tony definitely belongs in that same category, so he can't judge.

“You’re not… you’re not mad?” Tony asks them. Jan shakes her head enthusiastically.

“Nobody’s mad, Tony,” Hank says, looking back down at his device. “Just concerned. Scans check out, though, you’re fine except for a mild concussion and some bruising. If you want to go find Bucky, you can do that now; I’ll take care of sabotaging the platform for you.”

“Thank you,” Tony says. Jan helps him clamber to his feet and then pulls him into a tight hug. She’s a good hugger, warm and strong and not at all awkward, and Tony hugs back for a moment before they let go. He can’t believe it took him until this moment, seeing the rest of his team again, to realize how much of his loneliness had been from missing _them_ , and not just Bucky. “It’s good to be back,” he says honestly.

“Good. Now go see your boyfriend, I’m sure he’ll be waking up soon.”

 

*

 

When the elevator reaches the Avengers’ living floors of the Mansion, the doors open to reveal Thor waiting on the other side.

“I sensed you were returned, my shieldbrother. I hope you are well?” Thor asks very earnestly.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Tony says.

“Very good,” says Thor. “I was concerned to learn that you set out to meddle in time—you must know that timechanging is one of the most dangerous practices a sorcerer could ever attempt. But I am glad to see that you were unharmed by the experience.”

“Hey, Thor,” Tony says, thinking of something, “You can sense these things, right? Not just that I’d come back, but, like, shifts in the flow of time? I was wondering, you know, if—“

“If you had managed to change what you hoped?” Thor finishes. “That, I cannot say. I do not know what you intended to change, though I entreat you to tell me the tale someday, that I may help you understand better what you wish. I can tell you that some part of time has changed, recently, and that the course it flows is not quite the same as it once was, but I cannot say for certain what has changed. You must understand—In our memories, here in the present, whatever you have done has always been the past.”

“Right,” Tony says. That makes sense. In hindsight, it might’ve been a good idea to consult the Asgardian before embarking on a journey like this. “Thanks anyway, Thor, I really appreciate that. Sometime soon we’ll have lunch or something, but right now—“

“You have a more pressing concern,” Thor interrupts again. He smiles broadly and steps into the elevator, and for the first time Tony notices what Thor’s holding; hot food and cold drinks for Jan and Hank, who will be cooped up in the lab for a while yet. Tony gets out of his way and smiles back, giving a little wave as he starts off down the hallway.

 

*

 

Tony knocks on the door of his own bedroom, and immediately feels like an idiot. It’s _his_ room, he sleeps there every night; of course he’s welcome in the room that _belongs to him_. Why wouldn’t he be?

Well, because he up and left for a week without even consulting his lover, and then failed almost completely (or completely, Tony can’t know for sure, and doesn’t that just rip him up inside) at the mission he’d set for himself. He hadn’t taken Bucky’s choice into account at all, and now he’s considering going into a bedroom that’s Bucky’s as much as it’s his unannounced? Why _would_ he be welcome?

The door swings wide, and Tony jumps. Bucky’s footsteps are like the velvet tread of a great cat, silent and powerful—you never hear him unless he means you to.

“Tony?” Bucky says. His tone is hard to place. It isn’t disbelief and it isn’t excitement and it isn’t anger, but it isn’t his flat brainwashed-assassin tone, either. It’s all of those things and none of them. Bucky is holding very still, very quiet, and Tony just stares back, searching for words. Well, some of them come easily. He's said them to himself often enough.

“I’m sorry. I should have thought it through. I was an idiot. I’m _sorry_ ,” he says again, more fervently this time.

All at once the stillness in Bucky’s frame sublimates, like dry ice turning into gas, not melting, just there one second and gone the next. He surges forward with all his enhanced speed and his arms come up, and Tony can’t help but stiffen and brace himself. Bucky makes a little broken sound into Tony’s neck when he feels the reflexive fear in his lover’s body, and Tony’s situational awareness snaps back. Bucky’s _hugging_ him, and he should have realized. He’s such an idiot.

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

“Shut up,” Bucky breathes, and he holds Tony so tightly that it’s a little hard to inhale. Tony doesn’t care. He sags into the embrace and returns it, clutching at the back of Bucky’s sleep shirt. He’s curled over Bucky slightly because of the height difference, but somehow it still feels like Bucky is surrounding _him_.

They stand there in the doorway for God knows how long, pressed flush against each other and drinking in the contact for the first time in a week. It’s familiar and warm and they’ve both missed it _so much_ that it feels better than anything else they can imagine. It’s all they want, just this. More than food or sleep or sex, they just want to hold each other for a while. Their heads are bent together, faces pressed into each other’s necks, breathing each other in and closing their eyes to revel in the sensation.

“You’re safe,” says Bucky at long last. “Oh God, never do anything like that ever again, you hear me? I was… I was so scared, Tony.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony repeats, because _God_ , Bucky almost never admits to fear. “I was safe, I wasn’t in danger—“

“I came down to the lab,” Bucky says, talking over him, “and I found that damn contraption you’d been working on and that damn note but no _you_ anywhere. I had no idea where you’d gone, and then Hank worked out that it was a Goddamn _time machine_ and I knew exactly where you’d gone. You went where I couldn’t follow, Tony, you went to World War Goddamn Two by _yourself_ and I—“ Bucky cuts himself off with a choking sound, pressing his forehead into Tony’s clavicle.

“How did you know where I went? Did Hank—?” Tony begins.

“You really think Steve wouldn’t tell me that he went to see Howard and found a _different_ engineering genius in his place?” Bucky says into his shirt, giving a halfhearted snort.

Well, that makes some things make sense. That last day, when Bucky had gone all cryptic on him—he’d been talking that way because he _knew_ he was talking to a time-traveler. To someone who knew that Steve was in danger, and was trying to protect him, just like Bucky always did. But still—

“If you knew where I was, why were you worried? If you remembered—“

“I remembered you in the _war_ , you moron! I remembered you being there right before I _fell_. I had no way of knowing if you’d come _back_. Hank said you’d reappear on your own after a week, but you might’ve come back as a _dead body_ for all I knew.”

And, God, Tony almost had, hadn’t he? That’s what Steve said, right before they crashed the plane, that Skull would’ve killed Tony if Steve hadn’t come on the plane to save him. It’s hard for Tony to get his head around other people missing him, other people being _devastated_ when he’s gone, because it just feels so selfish to think about the way his presence makes other people happier, but it’s true, isn’t it? His death would’ve killed Bucky, cut him to the core.

“I’m sorry,” Tony says again, and it’s wet this time, the tears in his eyes audible in the back of his throat. “Bucky, I’m so _sorry_ , I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have…”

Bucky clutches him so tightly that his fingers dig painfully into Tony’s back, and Tony just lets him as he tries to blink the tears away. There’s something tight and miserable in his stomach that makes him wish Bucky would press just a little harder, make him _feel_ what he deserved for screwing up so bad. But Bucky doesn’t. He feels the tension in Tony’s body and he gentles, holding Tony firmly but softly.

“Shh, hey, it’s alright. I’m not mad, I’m not, baby. We’re okay, I promise. I was just scared, that’s all. And it’s not just me here, is it? You… you couldn’t save Steve like you meant to, could you?” he asks carefully. Bucky’s metal hand comes up to stroke Tony’s hair, staying with him as he guides them both back into the bedroom so they can sit on the bed.

“I... I did something, but it probably didn’t work. He’s probably—probably still dead, I’m so sorry,” Tony says. God, Bucky _knew_ what Tony had done, and he _knew_ that Tony had failed.

“You were doing that for me? That’s why you went back?” Bucky says. His voice sounds like… it sounds like he’s a little awed, actually.

“It started that way,” Tony allows. “But I couldn’t—“

“You could, and you did,” Bucky insists. “You know, from the first time Steve told me somebody from the future showed up to save his life, I knew what was gonna happen. Steve didn’t know, he couldn’t, but I knew. I knew there was no way Steve would die before me; I wouldn’t let him. I knew I was gonna die for Steve, and I was… I was okay with that. Just showing up, you did more for me than you can imagine, Tony. I knew when I was gonna go and I knew how, and that’s a lot more than most people get. And I knew Steve would still have somebody keeping him safe after I was gone.”

“But I _didn’t_ —“ Tony says, and Bucky cuts him off again.

“Doesn’t matter. I believed it, and I got to go to my end peaceful. Said all my prayers, made my peace with God and people. Made sure Steve would be safe without me. It was a better death than I ever dared to hope for.”

Tony doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t understand some of Bucky’s sentiments, has never quite grasped the idea of a _good death_ , but if anything he did made Bucky feel better going into the dark, the whole thing was worth it. Just that much goodness makes up for a world of failures. The tight knot of guilt in his stomach melts away into something wet and warm.

“Thank you,” he murmurs into Bucky’s neck. He presses a little, grateful kiss there.

“Just tell me one thing,” Bucky says, leaning into him further.

“Anything,” Tony replies honestly.

“Tell me you thought of me while you were gone.” Bucky slings a leg over Tony’s hips and slides onto his lap, still holding their bodies close together with his flesh hand on Tony’s shoulder, his metal hand on Tony’s nape.

“Of course, every day,” says Tony. He tilts his head; he has to look up at Bucky, now.

“Tell me you thought of how I’d miss you,” Bucky murmurs, angling their foreheads together. Tony finds his breath catching in his throat at the feeling of Bucky even closer to him than before. Bucky’s body is heavy, slow heat; he’s a jungle cat here too, powerful muscle under velvet gentleness.

“I promise,” Tony says hoarsely.

“I believe you,” Bucky breathes, millimeters from his lips, and then they surge into each other, reuniting in every possible way. They’re sharing space and breath and one single heartbeat between them, Tony’s synthetic heart steadying to match the even drumbeat in Bucky’s chest. They clutch tightly at each other as they kiss, exploring, as though a week has been long enough for them to forget the slide of each other’s tongues. It feels like eternity before they break apart, both of them breathing hard, both of them with pupils blown _wide_.

“Tony,” Bucky pants, like it’s the beginning of a question.

“Yeah,” Tony answers hazily.

“Why do you taste like Steve?”

They sit there for a long moment, just blinking at each other, neither of them quite sure what to say. It’s Tony who finds words first—not a huge surprise, really.

“Why didn’t you tell me before that you knew what Steve tasted like?”

Bucky actually looks a little sheepish at that, and his hands curl against Tony where he’s holding onto him.

“I love you, Tony, you know that. I just… I didn’t want you thinking I love you any less just ‘cause my _last_ lover was, you know—“

“The original superhero?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want you thinking I was… _comparing_ you two, or something. You always seemed like you, I dunno, _idolized_ Steve almost, so I figured it would be best to keep it to myself, at least for the time being. And then… there never really seemed to be a better time. I’m sorry,” Bucky says, but Tony brushes it off. He doesn’t need to be apologized to for that. He would have _liked_ to know, but he didn’t _need_ to.

“It’s fine,” he says. “And I promise, nothing happened while you were alive—“

“Never though it did,” Bucky reassures him.

“But after you fell, he tried to, to _seek comfort_ , or something, and I told him no, of course I did, he was grieving, but then on the plane… He was about to go down, and he said, he said he loved me, and at that point I… well, I…” Tony has no idea what the right way is to tell your lover that you fell in love with someone else while you were still together with him. There probably isn’t one.

“Tony. You don’t have to tell me a damn thing about how easy it is to fall for Steve Rogers.” Bucky smiles: open, easy, sincere, _lovely_.

And they’re okay. They’re going to be all right.

 

*

 

It’s not until after they’re done and sated that Tony remembers his secret project, the small box he’s kept in his pocket all week. It feels like years since he made it, like whole ages have passed since he first saw it completed. He retrieves it from the pocket of his pants, lying on the floor, and holds it out to Bucky without opening it. Bucky sees it and understands immediately, eyes going wide and shining. He looks… even Tony can’t read how he looks right now. It’s too much, too complicated.

“Before I left, I had been—I was going to—“ Tony stammers.

“Don’t,” Bucky says, and Tony’s heart clenches up hard in his chest, stuttering, and he tries not to let his face fall visibly. Bucky sees anyway and he reaches out, flesh hand cupping Tony’s jaw and metal hand covering Tony’s, still holding the box.

“Bucky,” Tony says, but he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Not now,” Bucky explains. “Not because you feel guilty. When you’re ready, really ready… “ He trails off, leaving the rest of the sentence implied. Tony doesn’t want to presume what that sentence might have been, but his heart leaps a little anyway, and his smile returns. He feels hopeful.

“Okay,” he agrees, and he puts the box back away.

It can wait.


	10. The Present Day, Two Weeks Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter! It's kind of sappy in the extreme, but... I figure that the hurt/comfort goes for you guys, too. Fluff is the best medicine for characters and readers :P
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me this far, and I hope you enjoy the ending!

Time has passed, and things have died down. The media fires that sprung up when the CEO of Stark Industries disappeared for a week have been put out, and the more literal fires set by a bitter Doctor Doom when he realized that the Avengers were not just going to give him a working time-travel device have also been successfully tamed. Things have become quiet again, or as quiet as it ever gets in the Avengers Mansion. It gives them time to relax, and to work on their personal projects.

For Tony, that means putting the finishing touches on his submarine and sorting through some new/old memories. Not much of his own past has changed, but once or twice he thinks back to his own childhood and remembers taking a completed circuit board or a robot prototype to his father proudly, only to be rebuffed in a drunken, distracted haze—except, he wasn’t sent away. He remembers it both ways: the father who was too busy for him, and the one who _tried_ , now and then, to pay attention despite some obvious frustration (frustration with a son who will later _fail to save Captain America_ , he now understands).

It’s kind of nice to know the way it could have been—and not in an abstract sense, either. He knows, now, what it’s like to have a father who at least tried to give a damn about him, and sometimes that makes a world of difference.

In short, Tony’s personal projects have been particularly _emotional_ , of late. But the good kind of emotional.

For Hank, personal projects means—

“So I found the Hulk,” Hank states, a propos of nothing at the end of a team meeting. “I had some idea of his trajectory because of the insect life in his path, but he was too erratic for me to track him that way. So Tony let me task a few of his satellites to look for the Hulk’s life signs. It should have been easy—his biosignature is very distinctive—but yesterday I figured out why he had been so difficult to track.”

“Why’s that?” Jan asks, leaning forward and propping her elbows on the table. She looks like she might shrink with excitement. All of them have been missing their meanest, greenest team member, but Jan was probably the first one to recognize that the Hulk had feelings other than _angry,_ the first to accept him, and she’s been shouldering more than her share of the guilt for his… departure.

“He went to the far north, so the extreme conditions obscured the sensor data. It’s still difficult; he might have moved from the coordinates where his biosignature pinged. But I have a fairly specific pinpoint on where he was yesterday,” Hank says. He seems more frustrated than excited, but that’s probably because his specialty is entomology and he’s not too fond of having to map those skills onto mammalian biology.

“So we have to go find him!” Jan declares. Then she turns to Tony, sitting on her left. “I don’t want to impose, Iron Man, but I don’t suppose our team benefactor has any kind of… vehicle, for this sort of thing? Not all of us are insulated against subzero conditions.”

Tony glances at Hank’s coordinates—somewhere in the Arctic Ocean, miles from land in every direction—and he smiles.

“I have just the thing.”

 

*

 

They plan to set out almost immediately. Jan and Thor are the most eager to recover their lost comrade, and between them they manage to get the necessary supplies together and load up the submarine in only a day. Tony is a little more skeptical about finding someone who doesn’t want to be found using outdated coordinates, but he has his own reasons to want to explore the arctic.

He’s long since memorized the coordinates of the projected crash site for Steve’s plane.

Tony isn’t blind to the humor in the fact that he’s willing to hunt for someone using outdated coordinates just because he wants to be in the right area to hunt for someone _else_ using different, even more outdated coordinates, but that doesn’t make him any less determined. If Steve is still there to be found—if Tony succeeded in hitting him with the failsafe time-field generator—Tony _has_ to find him. Bucky feels the same, he knows.

But at the same time, Tony’s determination has definitely mellowed over the last couple weeks. Not lessened, exactly, but decreased in fervor from something verging on manic to something more healthy.

He loves Steve, and he’s beginning to think that he always will, but it’s not the intense, infatuated burn that it was while he was in the past.

Tony loves Steve, and Bucky loves Steve, and there’s something there if Tony would just acknowledge it, but there’s something he has to do first. Something he has to be sure of, something he has to ask Bucky. It’s taken this long to be sure of himself, like he promised Bucky he would, and now he’s ready, if only he works up the nerve.

 

*

 

In a few hours, the submarine sets out for the arctic, and Tony is waiting in his workshop, pretending to studiously go over his schematics. What he’s waiting for isn’t the voyage.

“Hey, gorgeous,” Bucky says into his ear, low and throaty. Tony jumps, startled because of Bucky's near-silent tread, and then settles back into Bucky’s arms around his shoulders. Since he came back from the past, Tony’s been putting more effort into leaving his workshop on time on his own, but he waited for Bucky to come find him this morning. It’s familiar, reassuring, in a way, to know that Bucky will pursue him into the mechanized depths of the workshop. “What’re you up to?”

“Nothing that can’t wait,” Tony replies brightly. He realizes that he hasn’t really been looking at the screen for a few minutes now, but that’s not exactly a surprise. He’s too nervous—well, nervous isn’t the right word. He’s overflowing with energy, but it isn’t all _negative_. He pats the small box in his pocket compulsively. Its presence is a comfort, still. “I have… I have something to ask you,” he says.

“Shoot,” Bucky says. He loosens his grip on Tony’s shoulders when Tony stands, giving him the slack to draw up his to his full height as he turns to face Bucky, but Tony doesn’t _need_ his full height for this.

He takes a deep breath, looks Bucky in the eye, and then goes to his knees.

“I’m sure I toldja about our very scientific data findings,” Bucky says, resting fingers in Tony’s hair. “Y’know, about sex working better in places with beds and/or carpets?”

Tony gives a half-wild nervous laugh and shakes Bucky’s hand loose, taking it in his own.

“I thought this would be the best place for this,” he starts. He has something of a speech prepared; he just hopes Bucky lets him get through it. “This is where you came to me the first time, when you had your memories integrated, and you let me build you a new arm. This is where I came to you the first time, back when I had the chestplate for my pacemaker, and I let you help me charge it. And this is where—“ Tony can’t help himself, he smirks— “we _came_ together the first time, when you bent me over my own drafting table.”

“I can’t _believe_ you,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes, but his mouth is drawn up in a grin and his fingers are gripping lightly at Tony’s.

“This is where we got together for real, after I stopped being a moron about it.” Tony smiles, just a little self-deprecating. He drops one of his hands to his pocket, takes out the little vibranium object, still safe in its box. “So I thought… it would be the right place to ask you if you wanted to _stay_ together. Forever.”

Bucky’s eyes go wide and he wets his lips quickly. “I didn’t hear a question,” he says, but his voice is rough and his fingers are holding tighter.

“I love you, Bucky Barnes,” Tony begins, taking a deep breath. “Will you marry me?”

He holds up the box, open now. The ring inside, all intricate vibranium metalwork, is as beautiful as ever, but Tony finds he can’t take his eyes from Bucky’s face. He needs to know what Bucky’s going to say, needs it like air. It might be that Bucky is trying harder than usual or it might be that Tony’s nerves are getting to him, but he can’t read the expression on his lover’s face.

“Of _course_ , you idiot,” is what Bucky says, and he drops to his knees, too, right in front of Tony, so close that their bodies press together. “I was always going to say yes.”

And then they’re kissing and their fingers are laced together and Tony can feel the pressure of the slightly raised vibranium link on Bucky’s left hand and he can’t even care to wonder when, exactly, Bucky found the fine motor skills to switch out the links. The relief and joy and _love_ they feel for each other in that moment is everything that matters in the world.

 

*

 

Neither Tony nor Bucky can really keep their hands to themselves during the voyage, but none of the Avengers really expect them to, once they announce their engagement. Days of underwater travel seem to pass in minutes, with briefly drawn-out stretches when they get a blip on their sonar. When that happens, everyone stops what they’re doing to crowd around the sonar display and peer out of the periscope excitedly, hoping to see a lost friend.

It never _is_ a lost friend, not the one Tony hopes for or the one everyone else is hoping for, even though they're in the vicinity of both by now, but that’s not enough to dampen his spirits. Even if he is briefly disheartened, it only takes a glance at the little bit of metal on his left hand to buoy him back up again.

It’s an odd shape and an odd alloy, the metal on his finger, because it wasn’t made to be a ring. It was made to be a link of Bucky’s own ring finger, the one that was replaced by the vibranium link Tony built.

Tony’s never been gladder of his narrow fingers, even in years of fine work; it’s like carrying Bucky himself with him, wherever he goes.

 

*

 

The whole submarine jolts and lurches to the side with a horrible screeching sound, and Tony clutches at the table in front of him. Across from him, Bucky looks tense, too, and they both throw down their cards and hurry to the controls, scrambling for instrument readouts.

“What was that?” Tony demands of Hank, who’s already sitting at the instruments. He looks harried but not frightened—no actual hull damage, then.

“Impact of some kind,” Hank explains. “Probably just a low-hanging protrusion of the ice-sheet above us; we’ve been passing underneath a frozen layer for some time now.”

“That was definitely not an ice sound,” Tony says, leaning over Hank’s shoulder to see for himself.

“No, it wasn’t, come look!” Jan says from the periscope. “There’s something stuck in the ice!”

Bucky’s closer, and he gets the first look. When he pulls back to let Jan look again, there are so many expressions fighting for control of his face that it’s almost comical. Fear, hope, suspicion, anxiety, and probably a dozen other things Tony can’t identify at a glance.

“Do you think...?” Tony asks lowly, and Bucky just shakes his head. It’s not a _no_ , exactly. It’s more like he doesn’t want to hope too hard for something so improbable.

“Guys, it’s a Hydra plane. We hit the tip of the wing, and I can see the insignia now,” Jan says excitedly. “Hydra plane? Downed in the arctic? How many of those can there be?”

“We’re getting him out,” Bucky states flatly. Jan looks a little put out that he beat her to the punch, but she doesn’t try to dispute his order, even though he’s not the team leader. Well, it’s not every day you find the body of a long-lost national icon.

Between Thor, the submarine itself, and Tony’s aquatic armor, they manage to cut through the ice into the belly of the plane. The interior is frozen almost completely solid, so it takes a long time to melt their way into the cockpit, especially with the care they’re taking not to cut anything _else_. It seems to go on for ages, and it probably does, but eventually they’re able to retrieve a solid block of ice from the plane, still lodged in the underbelly of the ice sheet.

Tony makes sure to cut the shield free, too, and then they load their frozen cargo into the hold of the submarine.

 

*

 

Neither Tony nor Bucky is moving from Steve’s side. Well, the ice block’s side. Tony is still in his armor, so that he can use the sensor suite to scan the slowly-melting chunk of ice, and Bucky is all in his leathers, hair loosed from the tie he’d had it in during their poker game. Tony’s not sure, but he suspects Bucky’s succumbing to a resurgence of his old guilt, trying to scare Steve off to keep him safe.

If Steve is even alive in there.

“Guys, I don’t want to be indelicate, but… I’m not getting anything, here,” Hank says, looking up at them from his own scanners. “I know the supersoldier serum is supposed to be incredible, but there have to be limits. We know the Winter Soldier’s serum was designed specifically for cryogenic freezing… Captain America’s probably wasn’t.”

Bucky tenses. Inside his armor, Tony does too.

It doesn’t mean anything. They won’t know for sure until the ice is gone, and they can see clearly whether the time-field generator has activated. Nothing is decided yet, nothing is sure. It’s Schrödinger’s cat; until they actually open the box, Steve is both alive and dead in their minds.

It’s hell.

Tony reaches for Bucky’s hand, and he can feel the squeeze of his metal grip even through his armor.

Somewhere behind them, Thor and Jan are waiting, too, but they don’t have half the skin in this game that Tony and Bucky do, and they respect that. They’ll come forward when, and if, they’re needed.

It feels like it might be a week or a year before the last of the ice finally drips from the supersoldier’s body onto the drains in the floor, leaving him exposed on the metal table in his torn and tattered stars-and-stripes uniform. Tony tries desperately to remember the state of Steve’s uniform before the crash, which of those tears were from the fight with the Red Skull, but his memory fails him. He doesn’t have the data to know whether the time-field would protect clothes as well as body, even if he did remember.

Slowly, hesitantly, Tony takes a step towards the fallen Captain. Bucky doesn’t let go of his hand, and the grip is immeasurably reassuring. He lays a hand on the time-field generator on Steve’s chest, resting or active he can’t be sure.

Time to open the box and check.

Tony sends an electrical pulse through his left gauntlet, frying what’s left of the generator. For an endless second, nothing happens, and Tony can hear his pulse roaring in his ears. He was too slow, the generator didn’t make contact with Steve on time, it didn’t work—

“Tony?”

Oh God, that’s Steve’s voice. Tony’s knees buckle, and only the strength of the armor around him keeps him on his feet. The pressure sensors in Bucky’s metal hand are probably going wild. He tosses the generator to the floor automatically, not quite able to take his eyes off of Steve, lying there _alive_ and _well_ and _in the future_. He doesn’t know quite how to process all the things he’s feeling; there’s too much.

“Tony, is that you?” Steve asks. Oh, right, the armor. Tony pushes up his faceplate and offers Steve a weak grin.

“Welcome to the future, big guy,” he says. “You’ve been frozen in time for more than sixty years.”

Steve doesn’t have anything to say to that. Well, what did Tony expect him to say? Wow, great, I’m so happy to learn that everything I know is gone and all the people I care about are either in hospices or dead? Does Steve even _want_ to live like that? God, Tony didn’t even offer him a choice, he was so arrogant and _stupid_ —

“Shut up,” Bucky says, flicking him in the helmet with his free hand. “I can _hear_ you thinking in there, and you are way too smart to be that much of an idiot, Tony.”

“ _Bucky_?” Steve says, sounding amazed. “You’re, ah, looking good for eighty-something,” he says pointedly, pulling himself to sitting on the metal table. Bucky ignores the dig and smiles brightly, putting up a good front. Tony and Steve both see through it immediately, but Bucky is nothing if not persistent.

“The future’s great, Stevie. Films everywhere, flying cars, and let’s not forget so many supervillains they’re even recruiting half-machine half-monster assassins to fight them—“

“ _You_ shut up,” Tony says, matching Bucky flick for flick and making a loud ping when his gauntlet strikes the metal shoulder. “That’s my fiancé you’re insulting.”

They stop for a minute just to grin stupidly at each other; they can’t help it. It’s a reflex, at this point, anytime anyone says the word _fiancé_ in earshot. The other Avengers back surreptitiously out of the room, seeming to realize that the time for them to meet Captain America hasn’t quite come yet. Plus, they know the _other_ consequences that often result from a mention of the word _fiancé_ , and those aren’t for public consumption.

“I’m sure there’re good things and bad things both in the future, and I’m sure you'll both help me figure it out eventually,” Steve says. He blushes a little at his own pretentiousness, but quotes the French anyway: “ _Plus ça change, plus c’est la m_ _ême chose_ , and all that. I just wasn’t expecting… You can’t be more than, what, five years older, Buck?”

“Unclear,” says Bucky tightly. “Look, I’m different, Steve. A lot happened while you were gone. Things happened to me, and there were things I did that I can’t ever undo. I’m not the kid you knew in the war.”

“I don’t care,” Steve says fiercely. He stands up and walks toward Bucky, holding his gaze firmly. “I love you any way that you are, Bucky.” He breaks eye contact to turn his head towards Tony. “And you, too, Tony. I know… I know that’s not fair to either one of you, especially now that you have each other, but I love you both, and there’s no way I’m going to let either of you go around not knowing that I love you just like you are now.”

Bucky’s eyes soften and his posture relaxes, and Tony can see it in every line of Bucky’s body—he loves Steve, really and truly. A month ago, Tony would have expected to feel jealous, seeing this, but now he just feels privileged, so damn lucky that he gets to see how his lover looks when he’s like this.

And, well, there’s that _thing_ he figured he ought to acknowledge. Bucky loves Steve. Tony loves Steve. Steve’s just said he loves both of them. There’s a simple answer here.

Simple doesn't mean easy, but they’re superheroes. They can handle it.

“Actually…” he interjects. "There's a _very_ fair way to resolve this."

By the end of that conversation, Steve is blushing from his throat to the tips of his ears, but all three of them are grinning. Steve’s smile is delighted and a little shy, Bucky’s is small but real and vibrant, and Tony—well, Tony doesn’t have a clue what his own face looks like right now, but he doesn’t care. He could look manic or loony or just plain _dopey_ right now and it wouldn’t change a thing.

Tony already knows that he’ll remember today as the greatest day of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I finished it! I'm actually pretty proud of how it turned out, and I just wanted to thank everybody who left kudos and comments for that. I tend to be kind of insecure about my writing, but the support you guys have given, whether in your delightful comments or leaving kudos or even just the hit count, has really helped me to stay motivated and positive about this thing. I honestly had no idea it would have this many words, and it probably wouldn't without you guys, so, I guess, what I'm trying to say is...
> 
> THANK YOU. You guys made the fic happen, really, be proud of yourselves ;)


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